Kittens and Mittens

Another mash-up today. Title contributed from one of my students - thanks, Zeb! Super flexible, fun for any age and ability. You will need some extra equipment: cones, spots, and some random way of generating low numbers such as dice or playing cards.

Players will hit from yellow cones.
Coach will feed from near/target side.

Set up two cones anywhere you want the players to hit from (yellow cones in photo). At net for working on volleys, at service line for approach shots, baseline for groundies, etc. Cones should be 4-6 feet apart forming a 'goal'.

Winner Take All

Winner Take All is a mash-up of several different games. I am sure you will recognize a few of them. I got the inspiration for it one morning while brushing my teeth. That 2 minute timer on the electric toothbrush sometimes seems like an eternity!

March Drill Contest

March is here, which puts me in a festive mood as I hate cold weather, and March means cold weather is on its way out! Let's celebrate with a contest. Send me your favorite junior tennis drill. I'll post them here. At the end of the month, I'll hold a drawing from the names of everyone who submitted a drill. Yes, you can submit more than one, and I'll enter your name once for every drill submitted. Winner receives a Cayce Tennis and Fitness Center logo hat or tennis towel, depending on winner preference.

On your March, get set, go!

Ultimate Volley Drill

Ultimate Volley Drill by Inaki Balzola appeared in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of PTR's magazine. It

was presented as a ball machine drill but is easily adapted if you don't have a machine handy. Coach can take the place of the machine. You can do this drill with as few as three students. Students should be able to rally volleys.

Tennis Pen Pal Program

Did you ever have a pen pal when you were a kid? One of my elementary school teachers organized a pen pal program for our class. We corresponded with some French students. This was very big doings for a bunch of fourth graders from Dallas, Texas. I remember the experience fondly, even after all these years. Oooh, la la!

Recently I was talking to someone about how Twitter is similar to the old pen pal concept as far as meeting interesting people from all over. That got me thinking about reviving the pen pal idea for my current tennis students. Some of you have already expressed interest in participating. That's awesome, but how to proceed??

Safety first! I will be approaching my students' parents and get permission from those who are interested in participating. We also need to come up with a way of having them communicate with each other that is acceptable to all. Facebook is an obvious choice since so many clubs and parents are already using it. Or, we could go old school and just have them correspond directly via snail mail.

I thought I would match individuals or groups by age and level of player. For example, Red Ball class to Red Ball class, or Orange Ball female player to Orange Ball female player. That way, at least they would have their basic tennis experiences in common to start off with.

As far as what will be communicated, depends on how we communicate. Using technology such as Facebook, I was thinking of group pictures, pictures of fun stuff going on in clinic, reports on tournament/JTT play, school team news, etc. If we go with individual communication via snail mail, that's up to the students and their parents.

This will probably evolve as we go along. Any thoughts or advice welcome - tweet to me @10U10S or leave a comment here. Thanks for participating! Should be fun!

Toe Fencing

Toe Fencing is also from the Quebec PE site. It's a great idea for warm-ups for any size group from 2 players on up. It reminds me of the Gotcha game but doesn't need any bean bags or extra equipment, so hurray!

Pair up players. Pairs hold both of each others' hands about shoulder height. Object is to tag opponent's toes with your toes while of course not letting them tag you!

The site gives a couple of good options for game management: you could either go for highest number of tags in a giving amount of time, or go until someone achieves X number of tags before switching partners.

Tusker Tag

Another fun warm-up variation on tag from the Quebec PE site: Tusker Tag. Best for large groups.

Players pair up. All pairs must hold hands or wrists. One pair is designated Tusker. If you have an uneven number of players, include single player as one of the Tuskers also. Give Tusker team a ball. Commence playing 'tag'. Tusker team tries to tag other pairs with ball. Note they are touching other players with the ball still in hand, not throwing ball at them. When tagged, pair is frozen in place and must raise the hands they are holding up into a bridge shape. They may be unfrozen if any other unfrozen pair runs underneath their 'bridge'.

If any hands/wrists become disconnected, that pair is automatically frozen also.

Object is to tag/freeze all players.

Make this game harder by gradually shrinking the playing space. For example, start by using the entire end of court. Then shrink to back court only. Then to service box. Then alley. Any players stepping outside of boundaries are frozen.