My First Tennis experiences
I hope you are all keeping well in these strange times. Our thoughts are of course still with everybody who continues to be affected by Coronavirus.
This week I thought I’d follow on from my last blog and delve a little deeper in to where my journey with Tennis began. I’m sure it will be a familiar tale to many of my fellow coaches.
I began playing Tennis at the age of 6 after attending an after school club session run by one of the teachers at Ysgol Mynudd Isa in Mold, North Wales - Mrs Gaynor. I was a pretty sporty child but when I tried Tennis I felt like something just clicked. I don’t know if I had a natural affinity or ability for the game or if my general sportiness allowed me to quickly pick up the skills I needed but I knew it was something I would like to spend a lot of time doing! The obvious way for me to do that was to start attending weekly coaching sessions. At this point there were hardly any large facilities in North Wales and only a few coaching programmes happening weekly so it took quite a bit of searching around to find a coach and get started. Eventually, I enrolled on a programme with Eddie Hill at Mold Tennis Club going once a week to group sessions. I found that I quickly picked up the basics and could move on to improving my technique. When I got to the age of 10 it was suggested that I start individual sessions with a coach to get more 1-2-1 time so I started going to Paul Regan at Caernarfon Tennis Centre on the Indoor courts. It was only once a month at this point as, to put it bluntly, we couldn’t really afford to do it more often.
After a while my coach decided that that it was time for me to start competing and playing against other kids from different areas. My first tournament took place at Rhyl Botanical Gardens – I remember that my parents and grandparents decided to make a day of it and brought a picnic! From what I remember it went pretty well and I got a few wins – good start! More tournaments followed and I slowly got in to the swing of being away from my local area and actually began to enjoy it. I’m sure my parents would tell you that this is where our commitment to the sport was tested as it got expensive! If you’ve been in a similar situation I’m sure that you will remember the endless car journeys, hotel stays and replacement equipment purchases that being on the competitions circuit entails! But it was clear that playing tennis was something that I enjoyed and was actually pretty good at so we stuck with it!
As I mentioned last time, this is where the decision to take the sport seriously came in and with that decision some of the experiences and opportunities of my non-tennis friends also went out the window for me. Now, don’t feel too sorry for me – it all turned out to be worthwhile in the end and I don’t think that I would really change any of it but I have since found out that my experiences are maybe not the ‘norm’ for most people my age.
And so the cycle of coaching and competitions continued with many successes and a few failures (but we won’t go in to them!), I started High School and I was still committed and enjoying playing the sport I had invested so much time in. After being on the Tournament circuit for a while I had come to make friends with the few people in my school who were also travelling around and competing. It was nice to have some familiar faces at competitions and we would hang out together between matches and give our parents a break! People like David Callanan and Chris Evans became good friends both on and off court. Now that’s not to say that when we got on the court we weren’t competitive with each other – friendship went out the window then! We were a very competitive group and had some fierce rivalries going on – I’m looking at you Simon Morris!
It was when I was about 12/13 that I had come to the conclusion that I would like to continue my involvement with Tennis beyond finishing school. I think everyone gets to the point in school/college where you are pretty much forced by time/age to think about what your next step should be and what you see yourself doing ‘when you grow up’. Some of my friends were saying that they wanted to go to university and I knew that path wasn’t the one for me, I was doing well in school but had had my fill of institutions and classes and just wanted to get out in the world. I was in the lucky position of already having something that I enjoyed doing and was passionate about so it was a bit of a no-brainer for me to try and make it my career.
Decision made – while I was still finishing my A levels in March 1999 I enrolled on to my first Coaching Qualification course, as it was then called the Development Coach Award (current level 3). I finished that course on the Sunday before I was due to play at the Welsh National Championships in the 18u competition on the Monday at 10am. So I had to drive down setting off from Sunderland at 5:30pm and arriving in Cardiff at about 2am Monday morning! I can’t remember how well I did in the competition but I think I can safely say that I won’t be doing that drive again, at that time any time soon!
From the age of 14 I had been volunteering at Colwyn Community Tennis club based at Eirias Park just to get some experience of what it would be like to be a professional coach and this experience came in very handy when I started my first programme as a fully qualified coach at the same venue in September 1999. The sessions started as organised groups for the existing club members with all ages catered for and the Club supporting the programme. The sessions were a success and I carried on from there which I’ll go in to next week…