On June 8, 10 students from Sumner Club learned the side shuffle, ready position, one bounce rule, and groundstroke technique (both forehands and backhands.)
We tried to warm up with side shuffle drill where students paired up on opposite lines, met half way in the middle of the court to high five their partner and shuffle back to the side lines. Our students didn’t really get the drill or were nervous. Most of them stood still. So, we switched to running together around the court and dynamic stretching. That was a good time. Everyone participated.
We followed our warm up with bouncing the ball in place on our racquets and playing a game to see how many times in a row they could bounce. Then the students practiced bouncing up, followed by walking the dog and rolling the ball across the court in pairs. We finished this portion of the class by practicing Add ‘Em Up, which involved players rolling the ball to targets and getting points if they hit a cone.
We broke up into smaller groups. One group practiced bouncing and catching in pairs using the cones (Ice Cream Cone), another group practiced bouncing and hitting the ball using the 2 targets on the fence and a third group had a forehand lesson. We rotated stations every 10 minutes until we broke for our educational session.
The first part of our education session involved watching tennis. Volunteers Deyvi and Jenn did a demonstration of how to rally by hitting back and forth for about 5 minutes. The purpose was to show students the basics of tennis so they can visualize what the sport is about.
Then we played the Bingo game to get to know each other. Most of the students were able to participate but some young ones had trouble with the concepts or terms. But everyone participated and had a good time.
After our off court lesson, tennis resumed and students focused mainly on learning forehand and backhand techniques. Several wanted to continue playing Ice Cream Cone or playing messy bedroom (spilling balls on the court and picking them up was a fun game for three of our students.)
