Officially, our season opener got rained out on May 5th.
But KCTL was back with a vengeance the following week. The sun was shining and the volunteers got their kids huffing, puffing and sweating all over the court. It was my first time since seeing the kids at the beginning of last season, and I was impressed by their improvement. Strong, quality strokes, it made the first day of the season very, very exciting.
At both Marcy and Tompkins, we broke kids into different stations. The younger kids worked on the basics with foam balls - ball-racquet contact, shuffling their feet, etc. The middle aged kids played short games on portable nets. At Tompkins, we focused on competition--shaking hands before and after a game, keeping score, starting a game by spinning the racquet--four of the kids even played a tournament. Big group games like jail break and three strikes are popular with the kids and are a good way to bring everyone together at the end.
Everyone--volunteers, kids and parents--were in high spirits and looking forward to the rest of the season. Me too, me too.
