Tournament Tough: Wednesday

As usual we had another awesome group today.  It's a pleasure to work with kids that want to get better.  It makes it easier to do the work.  Z, Max, Stacie, Lauren, and Dave taught the clinic today.  We worked in the half court for the first part of clinic before going through dead-ball drills and doubles games.

In the video below we have the top court playing a simple game of "Queen/King of the Hill."  The challengers are serving cross-court to the King/Queen.  The trick, however, is that the returner has to make his/her return past the dotted line (which is about 6 - 8 feet in front of the baseline) or else the challenger automatically wins the point.  If the return makes it to the designated area, the players play out the point, and the winner is the Queen/King.

Tournament Tough: Monday

Today we there was an awesome group of players in Tournament Tough.

  

Z, Stacie, & Dave, with a little help from Jill Akiyama, ran 29 juniors around in the indoor facility on a wet and dreary afternoon.  We worked on point play for the first 90 minutes,running through different half-court drills involving baseline, transition, and net play.  Then for the next 30-minutes we did a little drilling and conditioning before finishing with a 3-court game of Rush&Crush!

It was Epic.

In this video we have a few of the juniors playing Feed & Approach.  In this game, the "challengers" have to feed a ball to the "champion" on the baseline--and then approach the net.

This drill/game allows the "challengers" to practice timing their "split steps." It also encourages work on their volleys.  On the "champion"-side, players work on making passing shots from the baseline.

Tournament Tough: Wednesday

Today we had 27 juniors attend our highest level weekday clinic, TOURNAMENT TOUGH. 

Z, Max, Jon, Stacie, and Dave worked the juniors in the indoor building, mixing half-court hitting (or live ball) drills, games, and a few toss (or dead ball) drills.  Chloe Pizer, Christopher Chang, Kevin Huang and a couple others fought hard to stay on the top court most of the day, while others like Eliana Fishbeyn and Brook Pritchard steadily climbed throughout the practice.  

The tennis pros have a lot of fun working with this group because we can hit-out with a few of the players and work up a sweat in some heated rallies.  Soon there will be video to prove it!


Tournament Tough runs 4:30-6:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays.