ENCOURAGE EDUCATION FOR YOUR JUNIORS
by Joe Dinoffer -
June 26, 2009
It’s important to remember that it’s the parents who support your junior development program. Sure you have to keep the kids happy and motivated, and their enthusiasm will reinforce to their parents that yours is the program for them. However, especially for the entry-level children, there are many activity and sport choices and tennis is just one of them. Creating an environment that stands out from your competition is guaranteed to grow your program to capacity and beyond. Here are a few ideas in addition to running a first-class program.
1. Provide a study room for juniors before or after practice to do their homework.
2. For the youngest age groups, incorporate counting, spelling, and other school subjects into their tennis training sessions. For example, if they are practicing control and consistency, have both players count cooperatively by even or odd numbers. Or, how about spelling words like elephant? “E” for the first hit, then “L” followed by another “E”, etc. For geography, try countries in Europe or Africa, or even cities in your region. For Biology, name animals that are aquatics, or have them create a list of birds, one for each hit of the ball. In other words, make them think and verbalize quickly while they are striking a tennis ball. Believe me, the parents will love you for it.
3. Another idea is to use visual and kinesthetic training aids and create hand-outs for the parents explaining how these aids accelerate the learning process. Again, you want to stand out from the other tennis programs and other sports programs in your general area.
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