For me this was a week to remember. I had a group of kids that play two times a week and are 6 and 7 years old. They all play on a red court and are developing quite some skills. We started the lesson with picking a pro player that they wanted to be that lesson. Of course Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are mentioned, but one of the kids wanted to be Pete Sampras (my idol when I was young). The funny thing is that Pete Sampras officially retired in 2003, the year this kid was born. When I asked this kid why he chose Pete Sampras, his answer was: “Because you told me to look at some tennis clips on tv or on YouTube and I liked the way how he hits his serve…”. To be honest I forgot that I gave them that assignment a couple of weeks before and this kid just did what I told him to do.
Let your kids be a proplayer and see how it improves their tennis, simply by having a role model/tennis hero and being inspired, even when they are 6 or 7 years old.
Another group lesson I had this week, was a group of 8 kids that are 5 and 6 years old and are playing once a week since 6 months now. This was my first lesson that day so I set up the court with 4 little nets (I just hadn’t put them in the right positions) and a couple of buckets with balls. In each bucket were different type of balls. One with red, one with orange, one with green and one with yellow balls, meant for the other lessons I had that day. I started talking with one of the parents and some of the other parents started playing with their kids. When I finished talking to one of the parents, I looked at the kids and they were placing the nets into the right spots, they were making little courts with throw down lines, grabbed the red balls (they could have grabbed yellow balls, but they didn’t) and started playing with their parents. They were calling the lines and keeping the score. They understand the rules and were even giving feedback to their parents to stand behind the lines and getting in a right ready-position. THEY WERE ALL TENNISPLAYERS!
This reminds me of something Abraham Lincoln said: Do nothing for your child that they can’t to for themselves. (In this particular case, setting up the courts). Now I know for sure they can play on a proper court, even when I’m not there. These kids made me very proud that day!!!
Next task; getting them to bring a simple tennis bag (backpack) and let them be prepared for the lesson by taking a bottle of water with them and a couple of other things. To be continued!
Kind regards,
Tim de Rooij,
Headcoach TV Nieuw-Vennep, The Netherlands
