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Middlesex Coach's Network
March 8, 2022
Middlesex Tennis have been working closely with UCoach to develop a strong CPD network across Middlesex in 2022 and we would like to see as many Middlesex Coaches throughout the sessions across the year.
In January we held 2022 Coach Forum with Natalia Ilkow presenting on Women and Girls in Tennis and Sangeeta Arora with a Competitions Update.
Natalia Ilkow presented on Women and Girls in tennis. There are 2 million fewer women than men regularly playing sport. Of kids signing up to tennis courses, 45% are girls. If we look at who signs up to LTA membership, we are down to 35% girls and looking at competition date, only 25 % of competing players are female.
In order to address this, we need to consider mental as well as physical skills. This includes setting an environment which allows girls to succeed.
Strong coordination and adaption skills is key to girls succeeding. See Slides here.
Sangeeta, our Competitions Coordinator, took the coaches through an informative session on Lets get our Players competing. The majority of coaches are working with players who compete whether that is internally, club competition or individual competition. Playing points and matches is part of tennis. As coaches we should be able to guide players into appropriate competition, and prepare their match play skills (including how to score, calling the ball in or out) to develop confident and assertive players who enjoy competing.
In March, we took part in Kris Soutar's 7 Ways to Move Your Opponent at Virgin Active Riverside Chiswick. We had 30 coaches attend and Kris took the coaches through their paces.
Kris shared a wealth of information and experience on the different ways to move your opponent, how to coach these skills right through from hand-feeding to live match play situations and the importance of setting an appropriate challenge at each of these stages.
Kris definitely gave us all food for thought to how we want to coach and what is our selling point to players.
