 |
| Latest News |
| News Archive |
| Monthly Newsletter |
|  | Latest Email |
| | Archived Editions |
| | How to Subscribe |
| | Send Your Comments |
|
|
| 16 Apr 2008 |
| ITF Monthly E-Mail Newsletter for Coaches, Year 9, Issue 4, April 2008 |
Welcome to issue 44 of the ITF Coaching and Sport Science Review, which is the first edition for 2008.
ITF Monthly E-Mail Newsletter for Coaches, Year 9, Issue 4, April 2008
The ITF Development / Coaching Department is pleased to welcome you to the April edition of its ITF Monthly E-mail Newsletter.
In an effort to keep you informed and updated on ITF coaching matters worldwide, in this issue of the newsletter you will find:
Development Events
Coaches Education in Europe
Coaching Courses in the Asia
Cursos para entrenadores en Sudamérica
Coaching Courses in Africa
News from National Associations and other Organisations
DEVELOPMENT EVENTS
10 - 19 Abril Cursos Play Tennis, Lima, Trujillo & Arequipa, Peru
11 - 13 April International Conference on the road to success, University of Växjö, Sweden.
25 Abril - 2 Mayo Play + Stay junto a Nivel 1, Quito (Ecuador).
5 - 14 Mayo Curso Nivel 1, República Dominicana.
An insight into the coaches education program.
Recently a highlights package of the Coaching Beginner and Intermediate Players Course (Level 1) is available to view at http://www.itftennis.com/coaching/education/courses/english/level1.asp. This provides an insight into the structure and possible activities which can take place when attending the course. In the near future we hope to add videos on the Play and Stay Course as well as the Level 2 and Level 3 Courses.
COACHES EDUCATION IN EUROPE
Solidarité Olympique- Illou Lonfo
Rapport du 17 fevrier au 17 mars
Lieu Espagne
J’écris depuis L’Europe pour vous donner mes nouvelles concernant mon stage de formation dans le cadre du programme de la Solidarité Olympique et de la Fédération Internationale de Tennis.
J’habite en Espagne, plus précisément à Valence, à la résidence Pextina. C’est un grand plaisir d´y être. Je suis ici depuis quatre semaines et croyez moi j´ai l’impression de n’y en avoir seulement passé deux. En tant que coach, c´est une des expériences les plus grandes que j’ai jamais vécu.
Voir jouer des joueurs et joueuses de différents niveaux et notamment les meilleurs joueurs et joueuses du monde; par exemple David Ferrer, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Dinara Safina et Anabel Medina, renforce mon expérience dans la matière. De plus, je suis entouré par les plus grands de cette académie: Pancho, Rosset, Rafa, Vicente, ainsi que Miguèl Crespo, homme d´une extraordinaire expérience, et de son adjoint Scott Over. Je ne pouvais pas rêver mieux.
Mon itineraire se présente comme tel :
Trois fois par semaine, ( le lundi, le mercredi, et le vendredi), je passe la matinée sur les courts de tennis de 8h30 à 13h30 à l’académie. L’après - midi , je vais au bureau de l’ITF et j’étudie de 16h15 à 19h00. Je reste sur les courts le mardi et le jeudi penant toute la journée.
Voilà un peu comment s’est déroulé mon premier mois.
Cordialement Illou Lonfo
Côte d’Ivoire
COACHES COURSES IN ASIA
Diary of a Play Tennis Course: Korea
The Play Tennis course is part of the Play and Stay campaign which aims to increase participation worldwide (visit www.tennisplayandstay.com for more information).
To give readers of ITFTennis.com a taste of what the Play Tennis course is all about we are providing a diary with different contributors from the course each day.
9 March - Federation Official - Chahoon Im(Korea Tennis Association)
I'm Chahoon and I work for the Korea Tennis Association (KTA). I was involved in organising and running the Play Tennis course with my colleagues, and have acted as the translator between the tutors and the participants, though this isn't my everyday job!
The President of KTA, Mr Dong-Kil Cho, assigned 2008 as an important year for focusing on junior development in Korea. We want to increase the pool of participants and the President asked us to find ways to do that, which is where the Play Tennis course comes in. We wanted to run the course to help improve how tennis is introduced to players in Korea.
Now the course if finished and I'm happy to say I think it was excellent. We need to update the system in Korea and we can help to do this by giving our coaches more information and new perspectives, so having them learn about the Play and Stay program is an important step.
From here we plan to run more Play Tennis courses, but hopefully the KTA can run futures ones ourself, with perhaps some more of our coaches training to become the tutors. We are also going to organise the purchase the Red, Orange and Green balls for our coaches so that they don't have to wait long to start using the ideas from the course.
8 March - Coach - Hong-Seok Kang (Sungnam City, Korea)
Hi, I am a coach taking part in the Play Tennis course. I work in a members club with 95 members, all adults. The club is near Seoul in a district called Bundang. I’ve been a coach for 15 years.
I wanted to do this course because I wanted to learn about working with children as I want to work more with children as well as adults. From the course, I have learned more about using tactics in a game-situation which is opposite to my programme which is based on working on technique first then playing the game. I think the way tennis is presented in Play and Stay is better than the way I have taught. It is a better way to work with beginners.
The sessions working with tactics within the games situation have been the best part of the course. I think the different balls are a good idea and give a very good step-by-step approach for beginners. If it is possible (to access them), I will use the different balls within my programme both with adults and juniors.
In the course I would like to see more chances to work in group sessions and to learn more practices, because in Korea many lessons are individual lessons and I want to work more with groups. Because kids needs group lessons not individual lessons. We have lack of courts so we need more people to use one court.
We played a competition at the end of today, it was good because it featured short matches, which is good for young people taking part in competition and lots of people could play on one court. Having two teams made it competitive and everyone got to play for the team.
Thanks for reading!
6-7 March – ITF – Suresh Menon (ITF Development Officer Asia) & James Newman (Tennis…Play and Stay Coordinator)
James Newman:
I arrived at the course, held at the Olympic Tennis Court in Seoul, about 19 hours after leaving my London home. For the first afternoon, Suresh gave the coaches an introduction to coach education and Play and Stay. It became clear that there was a great deal of enthusiasm from the coaches and the staff from the Korean federation. Suresh and I were kindly taken to dinner in the evening by three officials from the federation at a traditional Korean restaurant. The food was fantastic and I slowly got better at mastering chopsticks, I’ll keep trying!
This is my first Play Tennis course and it is special to me because it covers the area of tennis that I consider most important. So much of tennis education is aimed at, or aspires to, an elite level. Of course there are exceptions. The issue is that well under 1% of the playing population can be considered elite, which leaves the 99% that often do not get the attention they deserve. Play and Stay and the Play Tennis course aim to take the same level of professionalism and expertise shown in elite coaching, but directed at providing tennis suitable for the 99%, whilst also showing options for the young players in the 1%. If tennis continues to focus on the 1% to the detriment of the 99%, then tennis is in trouble, and when the 99% falls down, the 1% will inevitably fall with it.
Tennis needs to be an easy, fun and quick game to play. This course seeks to banish the traditional coaching practices of heavy technical instruction and instead replace it with a game-based approach that focuses on getting players to play the game from the first lesson and introducing RELEVANT tactical and technical instruction.
I’ll steal an analogy that Suresh used on Day 1. When you buy a new stereo, you get the manual with 127 pages on how to use it. Now, do you read the whole manual or just plug the stereo in and try it out? I try it out, and then when I’ve played a few CD’s I want to see a few of the extra features, so I look at the relevant part of the manual. This is Tennis. Starter players want to play from the first lesson, they don’t want to read the manual.
I especially don’t want to read the manual now, I only slept 3 hours until 2am last night, unfortunately I’m still on UK time (9 hours behind Korea) and I’m not sure how much longer my eyes can stay open, so it’s farewell from me but I’ll let Suresh take over (he probably won’t mention that he slacked off and missed the gym this morning, I was in there before 6am so I’m happy to expose him!)…
Suresh Menon:
I’ll pick up from where James (or ‘Newbie’ as he’s now called) left off by starting from Day 2.
We took the coaches straight on court this afternoon and showed them the proof of what slower balls can do. I got two complete beginner players and had them try rallying with a normal, yellow ball. Although they showed some natural talent, they couldn’t rally for long and tended just to push the ball. When we introduced the slower red balls and smaller courts - straight away they could rally longer and developed to hitting the ball harder but with control. This allowed them to introduce over-arm serve, consistent return as well as top-spin on both forehand and backhand. The balls really give the players more time and control and once they had played with the red ball, they were able to move on to the slightly quicker orange ball on the orange court. Within 1 hour they were rallying consistently from the baseline.
This is what Play and Stay is all about. Here were two players who could not have gone together on a court and just played a match, but with the slower balls they can and they’ll develop quicker so that they can rally with the full, yellow ball on a full court better than players who do not use the slower balls. Once the starter players had tried the balls, we let the coaches have a go at playing with them and set them the task of organising practices for their groups.
After lunch, James and I got the coaches to run more group practices that provided 3 elements: activity for all participants, fun and purpose, focusing more on tactics in the final sessions. This was a very important exercise as, initially, a lot of the practices shown did not always show a good purpose with a clear tactical goal. Practices must always have a purpose, we’ll work more on this tomorrow.
There is a lot of work to do but I really think the coaches, federation and the ITF will make some important improvements over these next few days.
Following the course I sat with Young-Mi Park from the Korean Tennis Association to talk about their 5-year plan for the development of tennis. I hope to add in a gym session after missing this morning, I’ll run Newbie off the treadmill for telling on me!
CURSOS PARA ENTRENADORES EN SUDAMÉRICA
Curso Play & Stay y Nivel 1 - Chile
Miguel Miranda - Asesor de Desarrollo ITF / COSAT, Sudamérica
Un Curso de Play + Stay para Entrenadores chilenos fue dado en el Club Santiago de la ciudad del mismo nombre en Chile, entre el 3 y 5 de Marzo del 2008. Coordinador por la Sra. Alejandra Gamboa de la Federación de Tenis de Chile, participaron 29 entrenadores de la ciudad de Santiago y otras del interior del país. Fue dirigido por los Profesores Richard González, Tutor – Guía de ITF y Miguel Miranda, Asesor de Desarrollo de ITF para Sudamérica. Entre las principales novedades del Curso se puede señalar el uso del nuevo material de juego, la presentación de novedoso material de Head y las pelotas PENN y la práctica con 4 personas que nunca había jugado Tenis y quedaron en condiciones (con material y canchas especiales) de quedar jugando tras una hora.
Especial importancia tuvo la participación de 7 mujeres, entre ellas destacadas jugadoras Juniors en las que se encontraba, Andréa Ayala que actualmente cursa el 3º año de la carrera de Periodismo en una de las más destacadas Universidades del país.
La ceremonia inaugural estuvo presidida por el Presidente de COSAT, Sr. Sergio Elías que en su discurso señaló la importancia de este tipo de Cursos en el desarrollo del Tenis en nuestros países.
El Club Santiago, uno de los más tradicionales de este país, se ha esmeró en dar todo tipo de comodidades a sus huéspedes.
Al final del Curso el Profesor Richard González ha continuado con un Curso de Nivel 1 ITF - COSAT para entrenadores.
El vídeo del Curso se puede ver en:
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=doswfL4qz68
Curso Play Tennis & Nivel 1, Ecuador
Armando González, Tutor – Guía ITF
En la ciudad de Guayaquil – Ecuador si dio inicio al curso de Nivel 1 ITF - COSAT desde el día 22 al 30 de marzo del 2008, se realiza en la sede de la Asociación de Guayas, que cuenta con la adecuada cantidad de canchas y un muy buen auditorio con ayudas audiovisuales.
El Abogado Eduardo Luque, Director de la Asociación, abrió el curso y dio la bienvenida a los participantes, dejando saber la importancia que tiene este tipo de cursos y los esfuerzos que se realizan para que fuera posible. Además el Sr. Luque ha mostrado amplio interés en la logística.
La ITF ha enviado una adecuada cantidad de pelotas Rojas, Naranjas y Verdes que la organización entrega a los participantes, permitiendo que continúen con su trabajo en los Clubes con esta nueva metodología.
En la primera parte del Curso solo han comenzado 12 participantes, los restante 11 ya realizaron el curso de Play and Stay, integrándose el día martes oficialmente para completar el cupo de 23 alumnos. La mayoría son de Guayaquil, algunos de las ciudades de Cuenca, Milagros y otras cercanas.
El segundo día del curso contamos con 12 personas que nunca habían jugado al tenis y fue muy grato para ellas poder asistir a estas practicas con los profesores que aplicaron la metodología impartida; jugaron mas de dos horas, y participaron en diferentes clases individuales y grupales
COACHING COURSES IN AFRICA
Regional Level II Coaches Course - South Africa
Karl Davies, ITF Development Officer for Southern Africa
It has been 4 years since the Southern African region has benefited from an ITF/OS Regional level 2 coaches course. Previous courses had focused on the development of the participation side of coaching. From the 18-29th February seventeen participants from 6 countries were taken through the steps of this advanced coaching course. Karl Davies and Prince Madema, ITF Tutors for the course, covered subjects ranging from advanced tactics and technique, biomechanics, mental training to physical training.
The course was hosted by SATA and took place at the High Performance Centre, Pretoria, South Africa. The venue was fitting for such a course. The ITF/SATA Training centre children were on call to help with the course. The children provided the course with advanced players for the coaches to hone their kills. Although rain looked like delaying the conclusion of the event the course was able to finish on time. The course was appreciated by all participants and a call was made not to wait too long for another one. It was a good warm up for the region in preparation for this year’s African Regional Coaches workshop taking place from the 24-27 September 2008 also at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria, South Africa.
NEWS FROM NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS AND OTHER ORGANISATIONS
HINTS AND TIPS E-BOOK PROJECT
A current on going project at www.tenniscruz.com is a new free e-book which provides an opportunity to view tips and hints about playing and coaching tennis. In addition the project gives the reader the opportunity to write their own hints and tips for other members of the tennis community to read and benefit from. For more information visit www.tenniscruz.com
TENNIS CANADA, TENNIS DEVELOPMENT: FULL TIME POSITION - SENIOR DIRECTOR, PRARIE TENNIS ALLIANCE.
Job Description
The Senior Director, Prairie Tennis Alliance shall liaise primarily through Tennis Canada’s Vice-President of Tennis Development, Tennis Canada senior tennis development staff and the Executive Directors of Tennis Manitoba and Tennis Saskatchewan. The position will report to the Prairie Tennis Alliance Board which consists of one board member of each of the Tennis Associations of Manitoba and Saskatchewan as well as a representative of Tennis Canada’s senior tennis development staff.
Qualifications:
University degree or equivalent.
Demonstrate the ability to lead and manage as required as the duties will incorporate a variety of skill sets.
Demonstrate a results oriented, motivational leadership style and sets challenging but achievable personal and organizational objectives.
Exceptional planning and analytical skills.
The ability to effectively influence and cooperate with internal and external partners.
Excellent project management skills.
Exceptional communication skills (written and verbal).
Demonstrate high energy and ability to work in fun, fast paced and demanding environment.
Willing to make a home base in Manitoba or Saskatchewan and travel regionally and nationally as
required.
Experience in tennis development industry/game and minimum Coach 2 certification would be a strong
asset.
Ability to communicate in French would be an asset.
Application Process
Applications should be submitted BY APRIL 7, 2008 and include a cover letter, detailed curriculum vitae (CV)
and the names and contact details (title, phone, email) of two references. They should be emailed or mailed to:
Bruno Defina
Manager, Tennis Development
Tennis Canada
Email: bdefina@tenniscanada.com
Mail address: Tennis Canada, 1 Shoreham Drive, Suite 100, Toronto, Ontario, M3N 3A6, Canada
|
|
|
|
