Coaching News from Connor

Term 3 has been a busy term so far and it’s only getting busier. Barton and Makikihi have both been participating in lunchtime coaching every week. Winchester have had all of their classes receive coaching on Mondays the last 4 weeks of term to prepare for the new turf court they are getting soon! Barton had sessions with all of their classes and I’m currently getting through all of the Gleniti classes twice each.

The school coaching has helped boost the number of free hotshots enrolments to over 80 kids now so hopefully we will see more kids in our hotshot programs. We also hope to see all of these kids visit highfield and Wai-iti tennis clubs for love tennis day on the 13th of September. I believe Wai-iti are still doing half price memberships for anyone new signing up on love tennis day, and highfield have a discount for players signing up for the first time as well. On love tennis day the tennis centre will be open for free 3-5pm with a free cardio tennis session from 4-5pm. 

Winter squads have had the highest number of players I’ve ever seen, so our players are well prepared for the upcoming tournaments here, as well as in Christchurch and Ashburton. We’ve had a performance squad at Wai-iti on a Wednesday which has been really successful with around 10 of our best juniors every week training really hard working on fitness, footwork, and some other technical exercises. Winter hotshots have also been doing well with some of them hoping to make it into C grade teams next term. (Starting 17th October).

Adult coaching numbers have also been healthy over the winter, we had 14 adults at cardio tennis last week which is from 7-8pm on a Monday night at the tennis centre. Tennis xpress on Thursdays 6-7pm has consistently had anywhere from 6-10 people per week. 

Adult matchplay on Wednesday nights have been given new life with a different format for the winter. We’ve been playing Americano tournaments every Wednesday which everyone has really enjoyed, we do mixtures of singles and doubles, tiebreaks to 10 points with a sudden death point at 9-9. Playing about 8-10 rounds each time. We even had players travel from Ashburton to come and play the Wednesday matches last week. Open to anyone. Friday junior matches have also continued with a new ladder format, with playoffs between the top 8 on the ladder for the final 2 weeks.