Homework and future blogs to come!

Lately as a staff we’ve come to the conclusion that some of our players need to focus some more on match play outside of Seminole high performance. When we do our clinics, we focus on a variety of things, from drills to live ball to set and point play. We vary our focus depending on our student needs, which range from age, experience level, and tournament schedules. Our differentiated instruction is certainly different from most tennis academies where drilling is a primary focus. With our family of students, we are able appropriate different strategies for different kids, which means we really do stay connected with our players throughout the course of their tennis lives. 

Part of our focus these next two weeks is preparing our tournament players for a big upcoming event as well as getting down to the fundamentals of shots and footwork for our up and coming competitive juniors. Just like in the classroom, though, it’s important that we put what we learn from clinics and SHP coaches into practice, so we have been incorporating homework assignments each week on Thursday for our players to focus on completing over the weekend. Last week, it was to find three different people in SHP to play a set against. This week, we’re challenging our players to compete in a three out of five set match against one of their peers in our SHP family. This ensures multiple things; that we are growing our peer to peer communication and strengthening our commitment to each other and our team, that we are practicing over the weekend independently, and that we are working on specific fundamentals, technique, and strategies that we have learned over the course of the week. 

I cannot tell you enough how important set and match play is, and all of our coaches at SHP encourage you to do your homework, don’t procrastinate, and come back on Monday with it completed!

On another note: stay tuned to future blogs about up and coming SHP spotlights! I’ll be writing about a few of our standout students from the past as well as college plans for some of our current competitive SHP players, and reminiscing about good times before we sadly have to say goodbye to these SHP players.