David Wilson is a Performance Tennis Coach and Educator from Ireland. He is a Ph.D graduate in the field of Education from Trinity College Dublin and is qualified to the highest level as a coach with Tennis Ireland. He takes up-to-date educational research and applies it to tennis teaching.
David
has spoken at several international events, including the ITF Woldwide
Conference and the Tennis Europe Annual Conference. His articles have
appeared in publications such as the ITF Coaching and Sport Science
Review.
Below is a piece written recently by David and is definitely worth a read. He is also very keen to hear your feedback and you can contact him on his twitter link, @davidwilsoninfo, enjoy the read!
Six Wishes For Irish Tennis In 2015.
Ok, time to stop talking about and to put it down on paper.
Here's my wish-list for Irish Tennis in 2015. In no particular order…
Time To Take A Serious Look At The Junior Fitz Event.
As the premier event on the junior calendar and the annual
showcase for our best young players, there's a few clouds hanging over the
week. Asking players to start at 7am? Rushing competitors through 3-minute
knock-ups when they've been waiting around hours for extremely delayed matches?
Lack of promotion on social media and on the Tennis Ireland website?
There's definite ways to run the event more efficiently
without unduly disrupting the great history and tradition – reducing the number
of events, extending the tournament by a few days, or even considering a second
venue for the youngest players. This
should (and could be) the most enjoyable and best run tournament of the year
but we are sometimes guilty of letting ourselves and our top juniors down with
the current approach to organisation and scheduling.
Time To Appreciate Our Travelling Players.
There's a hugely impressive group of players representing us
in all four corners of the world. From
those on the Futures tour, to ITF junior events, to several in the U.S on
various forms of scholarships. Anyone who has experienced any of these things
will know that the reality is often far from the glamour that many people might
imagine is the case. Making it to the
elite level might be a fantastic ambition, but lonely nights, brutal playing conditions
and severe financial burdens are often the price that must be paid.
Surely there are ways we can support these players and in
doing so, encourage others to follow in their paths? How about a constantly
updated page on the Tennis Ireland website with the weekly locations of our
travelling players, links to their drawsheets for the week etc (so it's easy
for everyone to keep up to date). Or what about tapping into the vast number of
Irish people around the world, by reaching out to our emigrants to go and
support the players when they arrive at a tournament. There can't be a city in
the world that doesn't have a few Irish people in it and surely there's a way
of leveraging that. When it comes to our top touring players, there's always
going to be limits in terms of cost, but that shouldn't restrict us when it
comes to caring.
Time To Re-Design Our Coaches Training.
As a coach myself I completely include myself when I say
that the standard of coaching in Ireland needs to improve. We are highly unlikely to ever have a base of
world-class players until we first have a base of world-class coaches. This isn't about being critical or having a
go at anyone, it's just about understanding that other countries are successfully
producing large amounts of elite players and that quality of coaching is one
(not the only one) critical element of the puzzle. Of course, coaches
themselves have to take some responsibility for this, but improvements are
definitely possible in terms of the quality and quantity of training received
and also the extent to which coaches are supported, encouraged and trusted by
the governing body.
How about linking this with the previous point for example
and offering a distance coaching service for travelling players (where they
have an option to be paired with a coach who they can email, skype etc during
their travels)? Or why is it that the vast majority of Irish coaches have never
coached at the National Tennis Centre – Wouldn't coaches feel valued and
motivated to develop their skills if they knew they were taking a specialist
session once every few months with one of our national squads?
Coaches are the key to our progress as a tennis nation and
we need to come up with imaginative and innovative solutions to get them
involved, engaged and learning.
Time To Make Tournaments More Meaningful.
When was the last time you went to watch an open tournament
and saw one of the best players in the country playing? If we don't have our
Davis Cup and Federation Cup players appearing at any stage in open events, the
whole tournament structure is devalued. Tennis development in any country is a
'trickle-down' process – The top players compete against the next tier, thereby
improving their standard, who then compete with the next tier, etc. As long as our
second tier never get a chance to compete against the top level, we'll find
ourselves in this continuous state of flux.
I completely understand that it might seem like I'm
contradicting my earlier point about supporting our travelling players, but actually
I think the two go hand in hand. Ultimately of course these top players have to
chase ranking points abroad and are often not at home to play national events.
So while we certainly should be supporting them as much as possible (and more
so than we are currently doing), there has to also be a nod towards the growth
of the domestic game and the nurturing of the next generation. Surely it would
be possible to increase top-level participation in open tournaments (thereby
giving other players a chance to compete against the best), by making this a
condition of the extra support we should be providing to those who spend much
of the year travelling.
Time For More Local Squads.
There's so much to gain for clubs from working together on
loads of different initiatives. We
already see great ideas like friendly leagues for social players or shared
courts between clubs during open tournaments, but how about looking a step
further than this. Why can't we get the best young players from 4/5 local clubs
and merge them into one training squad for example? I know this happens already
on a small scale but maybe it's time to grow it even more. The training could rotate between the
different clubs, the different coaches could collaborate on a training plan and
each take a session roughly once a month. Surely this would help the players
improve significantly, would get coaches working together on a joint enterprise
and would encourage other juniors in each of the clubs to train for a place on
this squad. Tennis is a solitary sport at the best of times and we need to do
more to give our ambitious juniors a team identity, a reason to train and a
wider circle of people to practice and compete with.
Time To Sell Our Sport.
Finally (and this is one we're all guilty of), there is
absolutely nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by getting more
people interested in our sport. Using
every opportunity to share Irish Tennis successes on social media, holding open
days in our clubs, bringing friends and family to tournaments and events, etc.
Every time we get an extra person involved or interested in tennis we gain a
potential club member, sponsor, supporter, volunteer. It's our job to make
people feel welcome in the tennis community. The possibilities for how they
might participate after that are huge.
Even on a bigger scale, we seem to be lacking an enthused
and interesting voice to appear on radio sports shows when big tennis events
approach, we don't seem to capitalise on the fact that lots of celebrities play
tennis in Ireland (how are we not promoting the tennis backgrounds of Niall
Horan and Johnny Sexton for example? – Two of the most famous and positive role
models in the country at the moment), and despite lots of previous attempts
we're not even making things attractive to people from within the tennis
community (with low attendance at even the highest level events in the
country). Selling the sport is not the job of one person. Everyone who picks up a racquet is a
potential ambassador and there are simple things we could all be doing to grow
the game and expand the support base.
I know it's really easy to be cynical and to blame someone
else for everything (and lots of times it possibly is their fault), but there
are definitely things that are within our control to tackle. If nothing else
then, maybe everyone might consider making 2015 a year when we're all a little
more open to the idea of working together on this.
Feel free to argue, disagree or jump on the bandwagon! I'm
at the links below.
twitter link: @davidwilsoninfo
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