On Wednesday, October 11 we have over 30 parents and juniors attend our first ever Parent/Junior Seminar. Our speakers included staff members Libby McGovern, who walked down memory lane with “My playing experience and career reflections” Billy Mendler who enlightened us about “how to prepare for a tournament”, Collin Crawford who presented “Getting the most of out junior and parents”, and guest speaker Dave Constantine, who gave us great insights on his daughters tennis upbringing with “Tennis Parenting, Our Story.” Michael Starke then followed up outlaying a general guideline for junior and parents and unveiled the new Western Region Junior Circuit that will start here in January of 2007.

While we were not able to cover all of the material planned, all in all, a lot of good information was disseminated, good questions were fielded, and there appears to be some genuine interest and enthusiasm from many of our juniors. The seminar lasted over two hours, and we thank those in attendance for their patience and interest.
I believe some of the main themes and messages of the seminar are:

  • Match play is needed to get better; tournaments are a must
  • Advance planning, a commitment and consistent hard work are key
  • Use of odd hour court time, ball machine and semi private or group lessons instead of just private lessons can help
  • We now run a full season ladder every Saturday 4-7pm, open to boys and girls. One can play a ladder match every week
  • We run monthly travel team matches with Birchwood Fitness the 1st Saturday of every month, with four kids playing here, four kids traveling to Birchwood. Sign-up will be at the desk and at JCTP
  • A new Western Circuit was announced, consisting of eleven Level 11 & Level 1 events in upstate NY. BTC will host two of these events. We strongly advise our juniors to compete on this circuit.
  • We will as a group, travel to two of these tournaments next winter/spring with 8-12 juniors
  • Entry blanks were passed out for our two upcoming junior tournaments, Nov 17-19 & Jan 19-21.
  • Seminar packets are available at the desk for those who could not attend our parent junior seminar

I mentioned to a few parents about some websites and additional literature regarding parent/junior tennis. Here they are: