Junior Team Tennis Week One Recap

Friday marked the end of the first week of USTA Junior Team Tennis practice. Each age group practiced Tuesday through Thursday for an hour each at the high school courts. With school winding to a close, the kids were eager to get out in the sunshine and take to the tennis courts. The weather was cool but I'm not complaining (sure beats rain). For each of the age groups (18U, 14U, 12U), the attendance was very good, despite the high school students having finals. Vinh, Berit, Nelson, and I were fortunate enough to have the help of several Northfield Tennis Association volunteers throughout the week. On Tuesday, Jacie Haroldson (who deserves a big shoutout for bringing team tennis to Northfield and coordinates everything for the program) and Tania Will joined us coaches to help with the first practice. On Wednesday, NTA president and avid tennis enthusiast Eric Lundin was at practices and Thursday saw St. Olaf tennis coach Scott Nesbit, Carleton men's tennis coach Stephan Zweifel, and Elisabeth Hurlbert, a former coach at Carleton and the current JV boys coach, all gladly helped run drills and gave the kids top-notch advice.

For most of the players, the first week was all about getting back into the swing of things on the court. For many of the boys, this did not take much doing since they just finished up their tennis seasons at the high school and middle school. The girls have been out of season since the fall, but they quickly found their touch. Hour-long practices fly by! After warming up, we put each group through some stations (6-8 minutes per rotation) and that was that. By Thursday, we had a good idea of where the kids were at ability-wise and broke them into teams (named after top pro players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Maria Sharapova) for the summer. For the 18 and unders, we divided them into four teams of ten. The teams either have three girls and seven boys or four girls and six boys. The 14 and unders formed three teams of either 11 or 12 kids, which are fairly evenly split between girls and boys. The nine 12 and under kids comprise one team of seven boys and two girls. If anybody knows of any 12 and younger girls that would be interested in playing tennis this summer, please email nfldjuniorteamtennis@gmail.com. By having teams of 9-11, the players will be able to get plenty of action in matches and practices will run more smoothly. We are also splitting the 18U and 14U practices between the high school and middle school to avoid the problem of having too many kids on a court, which makes drilling difficult.

This coming week each age group will practice on Monday. The 12Us will practice Tuesday and Wednesday. The 14Us will practice Tuesday and Thursday, and the 18Us will practice Wednesday and Thursday. The complete practice schedule can be found on the Junior Team Tennis website. One week down, eight more fun weeks to go!