Week 3: Lafayette Gardens Tennis Club Opening Day

The weather was nice and we had our two sister sites, Marcy and Tompkins, running smoothly like usual. But it was a big weekend, as we opened our 3rd site at Lafayette Gardens!!! You can view some of the photos on Facebook courtesy of Lafayette Gardens' Resident President, TYree Stanback. Overall, we had over 70 kids participate this Saturday!

At Tompkins, many of the kids showed up on time -- something we've been focusing on to ensure that they stretch and warm-up properly -- so we started class with relay races, then broke into smaller stations working on agility skills and stroke development. Some of the kids got to play small matches. Yuma won the big game of Jailbreak at the end class. Go Yuma! It was also Ishmael's birthday, so cheers to him.

Good times had by all. Looking forward to next Saturday.

Season Opener 2012: Rain & Sunshine

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.