ParentingAces
Posts tagged tennis parent
More Slashing of Opportunities
11 day ago
In case you haven’t heard (!), USTA changed the national junior competition schedule, effective January 1, 2014. A big reason for the change, according to USTA, is to drive competition back to the sections instead of having so many big national tournaments requiring travel all over the country.
Those opposed to the changes, including Yours Truly, kept asking USTA what it was doing to ensure the sections would step up and fill in the gaps. We never got a clear answer.
And, now, that which we feared – that sections would not take on that task but would actually slash competitive opportunities instead – has come to fruition.
I found out this week that the Southern California section is taking a big step in that direction (click here to read More >
Inspiration vs. Motivation
0Last week, David Benzel of Growing Champions for Life offered a free webinar entitled Solve the Mystery of Your Child’s Motivation and Distraction Issues.
During the 40 minutes or so that David spoke, he focused on the fact that inspiration and motivation are two very different animals – inspiration comes from the outside – for example, we might be inspired by reading a book about Nelson Mandela or watching the Olympics – while motivation is created internally as the pursuit to satisfy an unmet need.
Listening to David’s words took such a load off my mind! I finally heard and understood why all my nagging and reminding and pushing falls on deaf ears. There is nothing – not one thing – I can do to make my son take care of his More >
Parent Involvement: How Much Is Too Much?
51 week ago
Lately, I’ve really been struggling even more than usual with how much interaction and involvement I should have in my son’s tennis life. He’s 16 1/2 now, driving a car that we provide him, with 24/7 access to a computer and iPhone. That means he can get himself to the courts and take care of any scheduling or planning that needs to happen related to his tennis. That also means, theoretically, that I can take a step back and let go, let him handle any tennis things with his coach, simply serve as a funding source and chauffeur for the out-of-town tournaments (and, of course, as a sounding board, too, when he needs it). The problem is that he’s a boy, and, like many teenage boys, falls a bit short in the communication department, More >
And Now A Quick Survey . . .
01 week ago
Thank you for answering the poll question I posted earlier this week! Help me gather even more information by answering the 4 multiple choice questions in the survey link below. Feel free to add your comments, too, to clarify any of your choices. And, please do share the survey with your other Tennis Parent friends – the more data I can collect, the better. I will be using your answers in an upcoming article, so stay tuned!
Click here to access the PollDaddy survey
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ParentingAces Poll
12 weeks ago
Please do me a huge favor and take a few seconds to answer the following poll question for me then share with other parents, players, and coaches. Oh, and you have to click the “Vote” button for your answer to be recorded. I really appreciate your input!
Share this:“If You Don’t Like Us, Find A Way To Get Rid Of Us!”
21 month ago
“If you don’t like us, find a way to get rid of us!” That was Patrick McEnroe’s response to a parent’s question regarding the 2014 Junior Competition Changes at last summer’s Girls 12 Nationals in Atlanta, and it was really the beginning of my extensive coverage of the new calendar that USTA was planning to implement beginning January 1, 2014.
Now that the calendar changes have been finalized and approved at the National Board level, I figured I should do a sort-of recap of the process around the changes and how they came to be . . .
- Some time in 2011: Jon Vegosen, then president of USTA, charged his Junior Competition Committee (JCC) to devise a new national tournament schedule. Please note that the JCC was chaired by Tim Russell, a More >
New Rules in GA for U10s & U12s
111 month ago
Why, you might ask, is there a French magazine cover pictured at the top of this post? Well, 2 reasons . . . first of all, because I want everyone to notice that it features French pro, Richard Gasquet, at the age of 9, playing tennis using a yellow ball. Second of all, because in just a few weeks I’ll be at Roland Garros watching a couple of days of phenomenal tennis at the French Open and am pretty darn excited! (P.S. Anyone who wants to hook me up with courtside seats, you know how to reach me!)
Some of you may have gotten wind of the changes happening across the country with 10-and-under tennis and the mandated use of the ROG balls in tournament play. What you may not know is that ROG is now infiltrating the 12s, too.
Another Giant Step
41 month ago
This past weekend was another giant step in my Tennis Parent Journey. My son drove himself to a tournament. Out of town. About 2 hours from home. While my husband and I were at a family reunion out of state.
Now, before you start thinking I am totally out of my mind, please know that I enlisted the support of a Fellow Tennis Mom to be on call for my son. She and her son were staying at the same hotel as my kid. She was in charge of checking my son into his room and making sure he had his key. Her son was playing in the same age division as my kid. And the boys go to school together. (And I now owe her a very nice bottle of wine!)
As my husband and I left our house and headed to the airport, I made a mental list . . . Had I More >
College Tennis Due Diligence
02 months ago
Men’s Collegiate Development Report (Click on the report name to open the Excel spreadsheet)
One of my son’s over-reaching tennis goals is to play at a Division 1 school where he can continue to develop his game. He realizes that he is a stereotypical “late-bloomer” and that he’ll probably keep growing for at least the first couple of years of college, and he wants to play for a coach who can help him keep growing tennis-wise, too. So, Type A Tennis Parent that I am, I have been doing some research into programs and coaches, both those that are realistic schools for him and those that would be considered “reach” schools, to see what I could learn about player development at the collegiate level. Luckily for me, I came across the More >
New Coke & 2014
193 months ago
Today’s post courtesy of Antonio Mora . . .
In 1985, before all our junior players were born and when many of their parents were young enough to be junior players themselves, the Coca-Cola Company took what has been referred to as the greatest marketing risk in consumer goods history. The company changed the formula for Coca-Cola, the world’s most popular soft drink, the first significant change in its formula in 99 years.
The development of what everyone ended up calling “New Coke” was a long and secret process that even had a code name, “Project Kansas.” The company’s most senior executives launched the effort, hoping to find a new “champion” for the company and reverse years of decline in Coke’s market share. By the early 1980s, More >