St Mary's Calne
On Sunday 4th December, members of the LVI and UVI (Year 12 and 13) had the opportunity to start their tennis coaching qualifications. This course marks the start of coach education through the LTA and it allows successful participants to assist a lead tennis coach at an LTA accredited venue. This is a great course for any pupil wanting to work on a tennis programme when they attend university or at their local club in the future.
With lots of modules to learn throughout the day, there was lots to fit into day one of the course. Our LTA Tutor for the course, Mrs Julie Jones from UCoach, put our pupils through their paces as she started to encourage them to work on their communication skills, knowledge of the game (from tactics to technique) and set up demonstrations as if they were running a group lesson for five-year-olds. Our future assistant coaches have already started their assessments when they had to submit a video of themselves demonstrating a shot in tennis with technical teaching points included.
With a hearty brunch in the belly to keep us going into the afternoon, we started to breakdown the technical and tactical framework for Under 8s and our pupils were expected feedback to the group fundamentals of techniques used on forehands, backhands, volleys and serves. Once this was learnt, it was time for the students to demonstrate their knowledge to the entire group as if they were in a lesson. While it can be intimidating to stand in front of your peers and teach them tennis, our pupils did a great job and have started to become more confident at taking a leading role on the court. One last task remained, practising three styles of feeding while being filmed with everyone watching.
Thank you to the LTA, UCoach, St Mary’s Sports Club and especially Julie, for providing our pupils with a great opportunity to start their coaching education. Day two is on Sunday 15th January when our pupils will be putting what they have learnt from the course into a full lesson. We look forward to continuing the course then and seeing our pupils complete the course very soon.
Mr Jonathan Hayes, Director of Tennis