In Association with
Talent Spotting Clinics
September 2007
With over 50 rackets, a plentiful supply of balls and new coaching equipment collected from the Africa Tennis Aid appeal - Coach Noah and tennis volunteers suggested the idea of getting a new generation of young tennis players involved at the Winneba Tennis Academy. The aim of this idea was to introduce new children within the local community to the game who had otherwise not had the opportunity to do so due to the lack of resources and equipment available to them.
So... we arranged with the local school on the University campus ‘University Practice Junior Secondary School’ to go and visit the school’s Headmaster and discussed the opportunity of allocating a period in the pupils timetable to come to the Academy for tennis 'talent spotting' clinics
Back to school....Tennis volunteers visiting
The headmaster was very enthusiastic about the idea and arranged with the schools Physical Education teacher for the pupils to come visit the academy during their school day. After registering [or just taking down a large volume of names!] we conducted 3 days of spotting clinics with children aged 8 – 12 years, taking 50 children each clinic. We first split them into numbered groups and allocated them to a tennis volunteer. We all had designated activities we would do on our court and rotated the groups amongst the coaches every 20 minutes, noting which students showed possible potential. The activites included teamwork, co-ordination, movement, speed, physical conditioning and basic tennis skills with the sports equipment and rackets we had donated - all good fun!
