If you make your living teaching or promoting tennis, it’s hard not to be envious of the huge nationwide participation in soccer, basketball and baseball, and the success these sports share among school children.
We all know that tennis must attract the youngest players before it can realize a true resurgence and enjoy the popularity and economic returns of a new tennis boom.
So, where can we find the most kids at any one time and most effectively communicate a message? Schools are the obvious answer.
For years everyone has tried to expose children to tennis by taking it into the schools, where they had to battle less than ideal conditions and compete with many other school priorities. But, there can be little doubt that the atmosphere most conducive to learning tennis is at the local tennis facility (not the school playground), where it can be introduced in ideal conditions, played with the right equipment and taught by enthusiastic tennis-teaching professionals.
While some sports are organized through and practiced on school property, the idea that this makes the games more convenient just isn’t true.
Take soccer for instance. It may be organized through a child’s school, but parents must see to it that children are transported back to the schoolyard for an evening practice and shuttled to Saturday games that may be played in another part of town. The local tennis facility probably is just as convenient as a carpool ride to school and in many cases it’s closer than the area’s soccer field. So location really isn’t the problem.
In fact, bringing the children to an ideal tennis situation -- a tennis facility -- as opposed to trying to conduct a tennis program in a school gym or on the playground is just the start to utilizing some of the elements that make other children’s sports successful.
The real problem in capturing the same number of kids lies somewhere else.
Before outlining a step-by-step plan for capturing the school children market, we might have to overcome certain myths, only one of which is location. They include:
1. Soccer moms just love soccer. The truth is most of them know very little about the game. They simply love their children and the opportunity to participate with them (even if only from the sidelines) in a sport that brings their children together with classmates and friends, and the parents with their spouses and other parents. Overall, it creates a family and friend gathering that is fun for everyone.
2. Competition is bad for kids. Nonsense. Do you think other children’s sports are void of competition? Of course not. Competition is only bad when it is not handled or explained properly by coaches and parents. Most children’s activities, including soccer, baseball and basketball, suffer at times from the overbearing behavior of a few adults. And, the resulting pressure has a psychological impact on the development of young children. However, adults who act this way at sports most assuredly react similarly in other areas of their children’s lives as well. The solution is not to remove the sport or an element of it, but find a way to deal with the adults. Most people (adults or children) are instinctively competitive, and sports should be used to help them strive for their desired level of excellence through good sportsmanship.
3. Tennis cannot deliver the same social and competitive elements that soccer does. It can and it will. It’s just a matter of designing the correct program that brings children together with their peer group or classmates.
4. Tennis is harder to teach than soccer since it requires more specialized help to adequately deliver the programs. Not true. The new lesson plans and parental assistance program (fully outlined in USPTA’s Complete Guide to Little Tennis) have been developed through considerable research. They make it a family event. Parents help you teach the children and participate in homework assignments that encourage children to practice their new skills.
5. School children already have too many activities to add yet another one. There are never too many activities for most children. Tennis can be played year-round, but conflicts can be avoided by timing a lesson series on off days, like Sundays or afternoons when soccer is not scheduled. Or it can be arranged in between soccer seasons or during the summer months when children are looking for something fun to do.
6. Tennis is not a team sport enabling an entire class grade to participate. A whole class or grade level can participate, depending on your facility and the number of courts you can spare. Again, it is simply an organizational issue, and by getting parents and children together, you not only make it a team sport, but you make it a family sport. Children are actually playing on teams by the time the first Little Tennis lesson series is complete.
7. It takes too long for children to reach a competency level where they can play against each other in games and leagues as in soccer. Equipment is very important to this program. You will find that if you invest the profits from the first few lesson series into graduated equipment and create your own training aids, it will make future lessons much easier to teach and pay not only for the equipment, but increase the professionalism of your presentation while helping the learning curve of your pupils.
Many tennis experts, including tennis professionals, are also parents of school children who undoubtedly participate in other team sports.
It is surprising that it has taken us this long to create a program for school children hugely more effective than we so far have done. Consider the following: Let’s steal a little from soccer and add to it our own creative talents in designing a tennis program for school children.
The following is an analysis of the most critical elements of soccer and how Little Tennis for school children can use them.
There are very few teaching pros who do not have adult pupils who are mothers or fathers of school children between the ages of pre-K and fifth grade. (Keep in mind most of these parents are also "soccer moms.") How simple would it be, following a lesson, to strike up a conversation with this person about her favorite subject - her child. The conversation might go like this:
"By the way, Jane, how’s Bobby?" The obvious answer would be, "Wow! He is so busy - taking tae kwon do twice a week, soccer twice a week (one practice and one game). He’s even thinking about doing gymnastics."
Your reply would be: "Why don’t we get him into some tennis lessons?" and the obvious answer to that is, "Oh! He doesn’t have enough people to play with and he has so much fun being with his friends in the other sports."
You could say, "Can you give me a moment to show you something?" and you whip out a USPTA’s Complete Guide to Little Tennis or one of many impressive program diagrams showing the progressions you can take Bobby through during a tennis series.
You also solve the partner/opponent issue instantaneously by combining it with your soccer mom’s social and family interests by saying, "Why don’t you become the team mother (a role played by many soccer moms) and bring Bobby’s entire first grade class to the facility for group lessons? We can arrange an affordable 10-lesson series in which Bobby and all of his friends will learn and play together. And, the parents join the lessons as assistant coaches to learn and play with their children as hitting partners. Parents come free."
You also add that you will overcome the scheduling conflicts with other sports and school activities by arranging the lessons on a day that does not conflict with anything else. Most times there is at least one day that the entire class has an afternoon free, and practically all of them are free on Sundays. By doing this, you’ve just created a schools program for children that takes into account all of the successful features of soccer, including:
• Team mother: To sign up and organize the other mothers and children and function as a liaison parent for any information pertinent to the program that needs to be conveyed.
• Team parents:
1. Assistant coaches -- the better players among the team parents will become your assistant coaches (much like soccer parent assistant coaches) who, under your direction (following plans either personally produced or found in USPTA’s Complete Guide to Little Tennis), will follow the lesson plans and work with small groups of kids while you oversee the entire group, keeping various games, drills and play on schedule. You will meet with these assistant coaches before each lesson to prepare them for the day’s program. By utilizing them, it frees you up to not only supervise the entire court(s), but also lets you float from one child to the other to offer needed assistance.
2. Regular parents -- each child will have a regular parent on court (better than sitting on the sidelines as in soccer) to become a hitting partner and help their child advance more rapidly. You will see from the drills, games and lesson plans (in the USPTA’s Complete Guide to Little Tennis) that even a beginner parent can help. At the same time, the 60-minute outing lets children do something they love - play games with their parents. The lesson series also allows parents and children to enjoy the camaraderie of their respective peer groups.
3. Refreshment parent - the team parent asks one of his or her friends to become the parallel to a soccer refreshment parent for each outing. This means that parents alternate bringing snacks and drinks for the children each week. It is an inexpensive amenity for the parents, a huge convenience for the pro and an anticipated treat for the kids.
4. Court setup parent - again, the team parent establishes a schedule where one parent each week arrives early to help with setup of equipment.
Once the parents are involved and excited about the program, the key ingredients are in place for it to be a success - you’ve got your organizational helpers, and the program is being taught under ideal conditions - at a tennis facility. Even better, parents will learn right along with their children and may feel inclined to take more lessons and make pro shop purchases. Suddenly, the whole family is playing tennis.
By taking our cue and applicable parallels from the success of soccer, we, too, are establishing team parents, having children play with their peer group, and increasing the popularity of our sport -- tennis.
