Tennis taster sessions were served to the juniors at Burnham and Highbridge Junior schools throughout March and April, May and June. The final one will be done on Sunday 23rd June when the year 6’s at Berrow will receive their tennis taster at the Avenue Tennis Club as theirs on the 3rd March was cancelled due to bad weather.
The objective of the sessions was to introduce juniors from reception to year group 6 to tennis. Avenue Tennis Club Head Coach and trainee coach, Craig Phillips visited the schools and took the juniors through movement drills, racket skills and were space and time allowed they finished off with a fun tennis game. The sessions were encouraged and funded through King Alfred’s Sports College teachers JP Hoskins and Sarah Mussett with James Deem from the Somerset LTA. The Avenue Tennis Club also offered free sessions back at the tennis club on either the Saturday morning pay and play session or at the club’s, exclusive to members Vinny’s Minis on Friday night.
The taster sessions started off at East Brent Junior school on 2nd March with a picture perfect day for tennis; the sessions were received so well that Head Teacher Nicky Elsom, arranged for her year 3’s to attend the tennis club on the 30th Mar for a 3 hour session of coaching and fun tennis games. Although the children were put through their paces on the 30th the session was also used by the teaching staff to introduce and assist the pupils with their letter writing skills, with all of them writing a proper letter of thanks to Vinny and Craig for the day, explaining what they most liked about the session together with drawings. Craig and Vinny were both thrilled with the letters – an example of one is below all the others can be seen on the Avenue Tennis Club’s new website www.avenuetennis.com.
Berrow School was next to have the taster session but the weather proved to be the winner on the day with rain and strong winds making it difficult for the coaches to complete the sessions with all the classes. However as Vinny’s daughter was a former pupil of the school she insisted that the two year groups that missed out were offered other dates and this was done for the 9th (Year Group 1) and 23rd June (Year Group 6). School sports coordinator David Wheeler and Head Teacher Heather Hector both commented that the children enjoyed the sessions despite the weather conditions.
On the 10th March Brent Knoll Tennis Club were kind enough to allow Vinny and Craig to use their courts to provide the taster sessions to Brent Knoll School. Head coach Vinny said that the sessions here were far easier to run as all the others were being done on playgrounds where it made it a little more difficult to put across.
Friday 13th March, Red Nose Day, saw Vinny and Craig turn out with their red coaching clothes only to be outdone by the Lympsham Juniors who all turned out with at least one red garment. Again, as the school has access to the Lympsham Tennis Club courts the sessions were really easy to run and finished off with Craig and Vinny’s favourite game of Jail Break. The teachers and assistants also loved this game as it gave them the opportunity to throw balls at the children during a “jail break”.
Beechfield Tennis Taster saw Craig return to his first primary school and meet up with a couple of teachers that still remembered him or was it the other way around???? The sessions here were really well received with Head Teacher Sheelagh Vickery spoiling the coaches with cakes and biscuits at break times.
St John’s was scheduled for the 26th Mar but due to a clash with a Tag Rugby event the session was cancelled and unfortunately has not been rescheduled.
East Huntspill was the venue for the next session on Friday 27th March. Once again the weather made every effort to put a dampener on the day but Head Teacher Duncan Cruikshank encouraged his children to take advantage of the sessions and not be put off by the bad weather.
April 2nd was St Josephs turn and with Craig on a training day Vinny was left to run the session on his own. Mark Fisher the school sports coordinator made sure that Vinny was well supported by the teachers and teaching assistants and joined in with the jail Break game having some fun sending the kids back to jail. Mr Lawrence (Mark to Vinny) an old footballing colleague made even more effort during Jail Break to send the kids back to jail. Due to the size of the classes and time constraints it was decided to run another session on 7th April for year group 1 to 3 and this went really well too.
Monday 27th April saw Craig and Vinny at Mark School with the weather causing some disruption to the sessions again but teacher Fiona Robertson and staff encouraged the kids to continue and when it got too wet they retired in the small hall where they made the most of their surroundings.
Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th April Burnham Infants School received their sessions and it was really pleasing to Vinny that the kids remembered what had been done the year before and were really keen to play Jail Break.
Although there was nothing done at King Alfred’s the club organises a Junior Match Play Night for members who are between 11 and 18 on a Friday evening and this is run by Craig Phillips and Junior Committee member, Jack Tonkin. Head Coach Vinny Duddy thought the taster sessions went really well with nearly all the schools in Burnham and Highbridge taking up the sessions. Trainee Coach, Craig Phillips enjoyed the sessions too and thought that the best ones were when the teachers and teaching assistants joined in.
Both Vinny and Craig would like to thank all the teachers and their assistants for their assistance and for taking part. The Tennis Club has also organized Junior Tennis Camps throughout the year during the school holiday and pictured below are some of the children who attend the February Camp and the Easter Camp.