Tennis Ireland National Tennis Academy

Tennis Ireland National Tennis Academy

The BNP Paribas National Tennis Academy is a Programme designed by Tennis Ireland to bring the top Irish players to one central location where they can train with players of a similar ability and develop their skills under one roof at Dublin City University (DCU).

History

The National Tennis Academy began in 2003 at Westwood Leopardstown in the South of Dublin where Technical Director Garry Cahill (pictured below) brought together seven young junior players to train twice a week, by late 2003 this programme was successful enough to expand its training programme to three times a week for a total of nine hours. The bulk of this initial squad of seven have now gone on to compete at international level, players such as Mark Bowtell, Niall Fitzgerald, and John Morrissey have all progressed to compete at the highest international level. Other players from this original squad are still with the Academy (Sam Barry and Amy Bowtell) and continue to reap the rewards from the programme.

Facilities

The BNP Paribas National Academy Squad can benefit from the international standard facilities at DCU to help them improve their technical skills, fitness, and physical qualities in order to compete at the highest level on the world tennis circuit. The National Tennis Centre at DCU is the main base for players in the BNP Paribas National Tennis Academy, here players can avail of the Centres 10 multi-surface, all-weather courts. This means that Squad players can prepare for international tournaments before leaving Ireland on a surface similar to what they will compete on abroad. The National Tennis Centre also incorporates state-of-the-art match analysis technology which allows our Coaches to monitor all aspects of a players on-court performance from service technique to tactical examination during a match. Situated beside the National Tennis Centre is the DCU Sports Gymnasium, home to several of Ireland's current Olympic athletes. At the Sports Gymnasium Squad players concentrate on their body conditioning with various tools such as Hammer Strength equipment, Life-Fitness Cardio equipment and Ice Bath facilities for player recovery.

By July 2005 the Squad had expanded its training programme once more to four days a week relocating from Leopardstown to the newly built National Tennis Centre at Dublin City University. By 2006 the current BNP Paribas National Tennis Academy structure began to take shape as the squad size increased in number to eleven full-time players (including players training and living in DCU as residential squad members) with three coaches, and one physical trainer employed full-time.

Since 2007 the Academy has seen further growth to what now has become a 23 member strong squad of both full-time and part-time players (from 11 to 18 years of age). Since the completion of Phase 2 of the National Tennis Centre and the addition of six extra courts in 2008, Garry Cahill has been given the opportunity to invite Ireland's top Senior Tennis stars to the facility to train with and compete with the older Academy players. This not only helps the Juniors in their training routine and the opportunity to play against strong opponents, it also helps keep the Senior players sharp while in Ireland.

Performance

Full-time squad players at the Academy now train between 24 to 30 hours per week (depending on the age of the player) while part-time squad members train from 6-9 hours a week. Training programmes at the Academy are structured to meet the individual needs of every player based around the strengths and weaknesses of each player. Each players programme also includes a calendar programme of international competitions (Tennis Europe, Junior ITF, ATP/WTA events) allowing the player to compete against the best Europe and the World have to offer.