Week of December 7th - 11th, 2020

Our priority is to follow the COVID rules and protocols, so thank you to all parents and players for doing their best!

ACE is planning to run a tennis camp during the Holiday as well as tournaments, so stay tuned for a message regarding this from your head coach with further details.

As usual, if you have any questions or concerns please contact me.

Kyrylo Tabunshchyk,
Vice President / General Manager ACE Tennis Burlington
MINI TENNIS TEAM
From Head Coach Anna Momot
amomot@acetennis.ca

This week the young players had an opportunity to do many repetitions of the forehand and backhand. They really did a good job and worked hard. We also connected the serve with the rally, and the kids were serving and continued with random balls, thus having to
be ready to play from both sides -forehand and backhand. Seeing their play evolve, preparing them for future rallies with each other is exciting! 
FUTURES / CHAMPIONS TEAMS
From Head Coach Walker Lamarche
walker@acetennis.ca

Futures
Each week I see improvement. We are also starting to get more serious as a group while still enjoying playing the game which is really nice to see. This week we were working on showing the players when to hit a forehand vs when to hit a backhand on the ad side of the court.
Champions
We are getting there! The group had a strong showing this week and were focused in their practice! We were working hard on decision making; when to use the forehand and when to use the backhand, and we also spent lot of time on our volleys.
U12 PROVINCIAL TEAM / U12 INTERNATIONAL
From Head Coach Brandon Alguire
brandon@acetennis.ca

What a week for the u12 Provincial Program!!! The coaches introduced an award system this past week for showing great mental skills while training.
These skills include: 
1) Hardest Worker Award - the player(s) who give the best physical and mental effort
2) Competitor Award - a player who gives there best effort when facing some kind of adversity
3) Performer Award - a player who plays above their average level on a particular day or who comes up with the big shots at the biggest moments

I’m happy to say that all the players pushed themselves to try and achieve an award and the intensity and execution improved a lot this past week because of this. Not only that, but when the players won an award, it was obvious they felt great about it and were even more motivated the next day. The players who didn’t get an award also became more motivated because they knew they would need to push for more if they were to earn one over someone who had earned it the previous day.

We also continued to work on similar skills that we did last week but these skills are secondary to establishing a higher level of focus and compete level amongst the players. All the players should be very proud of themselves for a fantastic week and look to bring even more energy to next week’s practices.

Here is a list of the award winners from this past week: 

HARDEST WORKER AWARD:
Samaia Januszewski x 2, Anders Langan , Alex Szczypinski, Jagvi Sharma, Gabriel Solomon, Maksim Tesic x 2, Chenyu Liu Lucas Zhao
COMPETITOR AWARD Jagvi Sharma, Alex Szczypinski, Kevin Jing
PERFORMER AWARD Maksim Tesic
U16 PROVINCIAL TEAM / U16 INTERNATIONAL
From Head Coach Jay Barlow
jay@acetennis.ca

A good week of training for this group as focus and intensity is becoming more consistent. Building on our theme of variation; slice, heavier rally balls, intercept, serve and volley have become more effective. The players are able to execute these tactics with more confidence during point play situations. Continuing to improve the consistency and accuracy of our rally shots will allow for more opportunities to use variation with good success. 
NATIONAL TEAM / U14-U18 INTERNATIONAL
From Head Coach Mike Hall
mikehall@acetennis.ca

The International / National Team completed its fourth week of its current cycle this week. This week our training, which is built around variation, focused primarily on using disguise from the baseline and mid court in order to wrong foot the opponent. We continued to fine tune our serve and volley and worked on the first volley specifically as well as when to volley behind the opponent. 
Our matchplay concluded the week with some competitive play. Although half the group were competing at a high level mentally and physically, too many of the players become soft when things don’t go there way. As a result, there level drops and they are not able to perform well. Next week we will be competing every afternoon so the players are expected to bring a high level of mental engagement right from Monday.

Next week is our last week before the holidays. We will be offering a training program over the holidays for the players to continue so stay tuned for more info on that.