As part of this year’s School Tennis offer in Suffolk, over 120 students at secondary schools in South Suffolk and Ipswich have had the chance to be trained up as Tennis Leaders.
The Tennis Leaders Award is aimed at people aged 13 years plus who are just starting out on the tennis career pathway. 6 courses were ran in the South Suffolk & Ipswich area coordinated by Ali Furlong, School Games Organiser. The students started off by completing the core module – Introduction to Tennis. As part of this module the students learnt the basics of tennis; strokes, game formats and variations of the sport. They now understand how these variations of the game are used to introduce tennis to people of all ages and abilities. The students developed effective communication and organisation skills and they put these skills into practice on court in warm up activities and on court drills.
The second module completed by the students was helping at a competition. This was a key module as all the leaders were trained to help with the Westbourne & Copleston year 3 & 4 pyramid & partnership final competitions. All the leaders were trained to know what to do before, during and after competitions. The key part of this module was to know how to score a mini tennis match. Ali Furlong, Schools Games Organiser said “The quality of the pyramid events & the partnership finals was really high this year and this has been helped by the fantastic quality of the leaders who scored the mini tennis matches”. The leaders have been a huge support to the organisers.
Here is a video clip from students at Felixstowe Academy, who have completed the Tennis Leader Award. http://vimeo.com/66890931
If you would like more information about Tennis Leaders contact Tennis East on: tenniseast@lta.org.uk or 01223 210111