I was just pondering something I thought many times and thought I would share it:
Many secondary schools in the UK have tennis courts but very few primary schools seem to have them. By the time kids reach secondary school they have pretty much passed the age they would need to start playing to ever have a career as a player.
Is having courts at primary schools a strategy for increasing our success in producing players that has been proposed much? What are peoples thoughts on the idea and whether it would work and why it is not already being done? It seems a pretty obvious thing to aim to do to me.
In my area we have tennis coaches go in to the local primaries and run after-school sessions from which the children are encouraged across the threshold of the local clubs. This seems to work at least as well as having a marked out playground with no skilled/ interested tuition would. Probably the most active group in my club is the under-10s!
That really makes sense Christ. Though I guess I just think having the court there puts in the mind of the kids that they can try it out when they like and get into it as much as they want and then people those with the passion and skill would emerge naturally with virtually no continued input needed. Obviously courts are not cheap to make but short tennis courts would be cheaper and somehow most high schools have money for it so why not try to get that money given to primary schools instead (would that be possible?!)
My experience is that primary schools often don't have the grounds for much in the way of sports facilities. At most they have space for a very small football field. It's therefore usually left to local sports/ tennis clubs to provide the coaching facilities for young players to become interested in the game. Coaches at these centres might well rely a lot of school coaching to help provide them with a reasonable income - but those schools paying for them, and that have some tennis facilities, are usually private schools.
I think its an excellent idea in theory. Space is an issue though, I could see more schools in outer areas benefiting more than the inner city types. It is always going to be an "afterschool" type deal as well as for the time a primary allocates to PE they would need all the children involved not waiting for their turn. Team sports offer that, tennis does not.
A lot of it is through after schools clubs that parents pay for, there is also the tennis for £25 which includes 6 weeks coaching and a racket. Certainly where I live there is ample opportunity to play tennis at a relatively low cost, certainly cheaper than joining a football team.
I guess for me the whole point is that its seems to me most kids never get the chance to try playing for free til highschool and it seems we could massively widen the net we try to catch talent in by just marking out short tennis court and a net and playing some killer and round the court etc and making it available to play on in lunch breaks - seems an obvious thing for the lta to invest in in target areas only even
Strangely (given what I said above) my tennis club actually backs on to a primary school, and we have put a gate into "their side" of two of our hard courts so they get use of those courts during school hours.
To help their use we have marked up the space as multiple (four? Edit: Just checked, it is eight.) touch tennis courts which also work as red ball courts for them.
... but our situation is down to serendipitous location of the school and the tennis club that is not possible to repeat around the country, I would hazard.
-- Edited by christ on Wednesday 14th of August 2019 03:28:28 PM
From my experience, schools tennis often relies an enthusiastic tennis fan/player amongst the staff. The LTA did provide loads of equipment to schools years back, but if there's no staff member keen on tennis it just sits in the cupboard. After school clubs, unless tennis specific, concentrate on the sports which are much easier to organise in groups of varying ages and standards....i.e. Rounders, Dodgeball, Football, Tag Rugby etc. Potentially a rebound wall in each school would actually be of more benefit than a marked out court, because more often than not the main problem will be finding a partner of the correct standard. For example in my eldest son's (age 10) class of 30 pupils only him and one other lad have played tennis before.
I don't know if the programme is still continued under the new regime but the LTA set up a great initiative in this area about 4-5 years ago. Developed a package which could be done in a school hall if need be. Provided instruction for the staff backed up by a video course which was left with them, provided free mini racquets and soft balls and tried to foster links with local clubs. It was very popular and widely taken up by schools across the country. It was not tennis as we know it with formal matchplay but a tennis based activity tailored for the average primary school facilities and sporting time-slot.
Edit: sorry largely duplicated what BorntoWin has said...
-- Edited by The Optimist on Wednesday 14th of August 2019 02:30:14 PM
Also, our local tennis club (10mins walk from the local primary school) offers its Year 5&6 an afternoon of tennis during the summer term. They take them in blocks of about 16 for 45mins to an hour during the school afternoon.
