Dear New Tennis Parent

Welcome to Tennis.

Subject: Your child’s tennis

Dear New Tennis Parent

So we cannot guarantee that this will be their favourite sport. We can’t even be sure they will take to it easily and we certainly can’t guarantee they will be a tennis star!

But …………a lot of good stuff will happen to them while at tennis. They learn to work with others, boys/girls, some older, some younger. They learn to concentrate by tracking and striking a little fluorescent tennis ball. There are red, orange, green and yellow tennis balls and your children will enjoy progressing through the balls. While they play, we encourage independence so are happy to take longer to get something right if it means that your child can do it themselves next time, independently. We applaud great work and encourage mistakes as that is where the learning can take place. The culture of our tennis program is rich on effort, commitment and honesty before results.

Progression in tennis can be vastly different between kids. They will look forward to playing some of our ‘silly’ tennis games which mixed with modern technical instruction and rally based learning, gives them the balance of lesson and play. We will slowly introduce the rules and etiquette of tennis as they learn through a series of different tennis games, drills and activities. The coach/player ratio ranges between 4:1 for our youngest players through to 8:1 for more competitive squads plus 1:1 private sessions are popular if they start to love the sport.

We will do our best to help give them the ‘tennis bug’ and if they do enjoy tennis, it is a sport for life with players in their late 80’s and 90’s still playing. Tennis can be played on holidays, overseas, primary school, high school, university, workplaces and of course, local tennis clubs. It also has a fantastic pathway for those with a passion and talent for the sport with junior training, tournaments and club pennants being fantastic opportunities to practice goal setting, overcome adversity, stay fit and healthy, meet new people, practise leadership, build teamwork skills and possibly even travel interstate or overseas for the sport. Tennis is both an individual and a team sport, making it unique.

The lessons learnt in tennis apply to life and we want tennis to complement your child’s development. We also want you to play tennis with them! Be their playing partner. They don’t want you as their instructor but show an interest in their game and you have a healthy, fun activity that you can do with your child. Your child will have a sport for life and they will grow on and off the court.