Week of October 26th - November 1st 2020

We are glad to inform you that we will be sending weekly updates for all the competitive programs, so you can better stay informed, especially during these Covid times as parents [unless they are members] are not allowed in the club. We assure you that we have the health of your child in mind, both physically and mentally and we encourage you to keep the conversation going by reading the updates and staying in touch with your head coach. If you have any questions please reach out to Sam Jonas, Academy Director at sam@acetennis.ca.


Craig Mercer
Tennis Director and Assistant General Manager, Toronto Tennis City
MINI TENNIS TEAM
Head Coach John Cairns
This week in the Little Ace’s we continued to work on our reception and set up skills. Building upon our “ready ready split” set up and judgement warm up, where the Ace’s call there set up “forehand or backhand” before the ball bounces. We have done this for the first 4 weeks. Then we moved into calling “up back or stay” for the next 3 weeks which was connected to the forehand or backhand call i.e. they set up for their forehand or backhand while moving up back or stay to receive the ball in their comfy zone. This week we simplified the call to split, while emphasizing the athletic active nature of ready position, teaching that it is the split step that helps you judge whether it is a forehand or backhand and whether you need to move up back or stay to receive the ball in the comfy zone and it was very effective. It tied in the previous 2 months work, and we had some huge breakthroughs with Ace’s from top to bottom.

We continued our extensive hammer grip work for the serve, both in our racquet skills warm up at the start and specifically in our serve warm up with the double edge challenge where the Ace’s are challenged to see how many double chops in a row they could do. The double chop hammer grip involves hitting the ball down with the bottom edge of the racquet, then up with the top edge of the racquet. While doing this for 5 min coaches walked around and helped with the hammer grip. We took a brief break this week from the edging throw position serve and allowed regular set up and to develop a throw feeling with the serve.
FUTURES / CHAMPIONS TEAMS
Head Coach Adam Dykes
Great week this week with the Futures/Champs we have been working on looking to take time away from our opponents by taking the ball on the rise. This is a tough skill to acquire for some but the kids are learning and adapting fast. This will be a skill that they will be able to use for years to come. We have also been reinforcing proper athletic look and recoveries on all strokes including the serve and return.
PROVINCIAL / NATIONAL U12 PROVINCIAL INTERNATIONAL
TEAMS
Head Coach Sam Jonas
This week in training we focused on two major areas of development:

1) winning the X court battle
2) returning serve to our opponent's backhand to start the point

In order to have greater success in cross court rallies a player must first move well and recover effectively to the correct spot on the court, which is why this past week we started each practice with cross court hitting drills with an emphasis on the quality and consistency of the rally ball and proper recovery for every shot.  

To emphasize the second part of our practice; we then moved into a feeding drill where the coach is serving a second serve and the player is trying to hit the ball to their opponent's backhand. The coaches were focusing on making sure that a proper recovery was made after each serve. The recovery however can vary based on the quality of the return, the players intention/type of ball they hit and the coaches were giving lots of feedback to ensure our players are making the correct positioning decision for each serve return. For example when should a player try to send a more neutral rally ball vs a flatter drive and where to recover based on which shot is executed. Or giving feedback based on where to recover if the quality of the execution is low. We want the players reacting as if they are playing a point in a tournament and understanding how to deal with any number of outcomes they will encounter in competitive situations.