Seven boys came again. " Seven" is a great number in catholic.
Tommy, Brian, Barry, Frankie, Calvin, Nicholas, Jordan.
Today, we had our experienced old boys helper--Raymond.
Tommy was enthusiast in tennis. He's always the first one to come to the court. In these three weeks, when I arrived the court, I only saw him practicing serve himself. I do appreciated his heart of tennis.
So, we had so many drills today.
Some groundstroke foreahand practice drills.
Then, I gave them some forehand and backhand, with some in-side-out forehand. Most boys did well in the drills. I can see boys improved so much in these few weeks, especially after the gathering at the SCAA and the tournament in Victoria Park. Boys learnt more about their footwork and the sense of playing in the baseline. Raymond and I all totally agreed that they improved their stroke so much. We're glad to seeing that, so our next goal, or our coming goal is to win the Finneran Cup. Boys, try to do your best in the match.
What's more, boys have some serve practice. It is a fact that we do need serve practice every every time in our lesson. I would spare about fifteen minutes for the boys to practice their serve. You will see that, even they have warm-up their serve, they would have few double faults in a game, unbelievable. You would know that, though they had warmed-up and practiced their serve, two boys had two double faults in the same game when they had match at the end of the lesson. I doubted that, boys' serve are not awful, but they just want to have a powerful serve like Roddick. We can see that Chris and Barry like those kind of "rocket" serve. At the end, some boys didn't focus on the consistence of their serve. Maybe, next time we should focus more on their second serve.
Some boys tried "serve-and-volley" skills which they learnt from Ernest last lesson. Raymond told me that boys did well in "serve-and-volley". So, I decided to have some approach shot practices. I gave the drill for them before. The approach shot drill needs the boys to run to the next with an approach shot. Boys did well, especially the new intermediate players: Calvin, Nicholas and Tommy. I have to praise Tommy again, he did his best, I know. I like his approaching shot! He had improved his volleys. I can see boys were improving their volleys, they have the sense of the net play. We can see that they know the effect of the "split step", now they know how to focus at the net play.
Raymond and I were so happy about their performance.
So, lastly we had the match.
But, it rained. We waited a while.
The court is a little bit wet, and I decided to have some volley practice. They did some volley-volley practice. Tommy, Brian, Calvin and Nicholas improved their volleys so much. I can see boys' footwork! Improved!
At the end, we had the match:
Raymond and Tommy vs. Jordan and Calvin
Frankie and Barry vs. Brian and Nicholas
The result was unpreditable, Raymond's team lost and Barry's team lost.
We had the review of the match. The winner told us that Frankie and Barry had too many unforecd errors. I can see Brian was a good navigator, he communicated with Nicholas so much during the match. He leaded his partner and gave many advices, which I can feel that he would be a very good partner of Lourve. One more thing, Tommy did tried his best in his net play, Raymond felt that his volleys were improved.
This is the end of the review.
May boys leave some comments.
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4 comments:
Hi all :
Edmond, thanks for yr comprehensive review of yr lession n I'm embarrassing for my laziness on my papper work recently.
I also noticed about the sound improvement of the boys, however, they all need a consistent serve to complete their game as u mentioned. Will work hard on this today.
c u all on Sat.
Cheers
Ernest
Hi all,
Edmond, thanks for the excellent work you put in. I know that you keep a technical file for all the players in terms of problem areas and areas for improvement.
I agree that the boys work extremely hard to practise their games, but they have to remember one important thing - Not to practise your mistakes, but work to remove them.
I have seen a lot of practises gone to waste when the player is not picking up the invaluable advice of the coaches.
Both Ernest and Edmond have been wonderfully systematic to improve the games of our players. In response, I can see that the boys are trying their best and the improvement has been dramatic during this short period.
We are all stubborn with our habits. I am still hitting my backhand shot around my body (opening my hip) rather than directly straight back at my opponent. A few of the boys are very stubborn with their strokes, be it dropping the racket face when volleying or tossing the ball like Simon during service.
Take my advice on this - it is much better to correct the mistakes now, dont leave them too late, they become bad habits.
Dear all,
I should have gone to the court helping out Edmond, Ernest and Raymond for the team. I promise to stop by more often in the future.
It is encouraging to have seen such improvement within a few weeks after the Junior tournament and SCAA gathering. Boys, please keep it up. And from what I have spotted for the past few meetings, the boys are really improving their ground strokes and tactics for their games.
As Raymond had said, there are much fewer 'free' shots and unforced errors during the games with the boys now and we, the old boys, had to work harder to earn the shots and win the game.
I can see the gaps are closing in between the old boys and the current team and that is a very good sign and we should thank Edmond and Ernest for picking up the coaching sessions during the hot summer.
Beside all these positive things, I wish my following three wishes can be granted:
1) Fewer lost of balls;
2) Fewer empty bottles in courts;
3) Keep the Entrance Gate closed;
Cheers
Joseph
Dear all,
I just did what I can do here. I like writing something and taking down something in memories or for record. I hope all of you would enjoy the blog and my post about their training.
I hope all of you would know more about what they did and how they behave in my lesson =]
But, I doubted that I can do only this little thing to help the boys and our group. Raymond, Joseph and other old boys ,you all were great in terms of helping the wahyan school team.
Raymond and Jospeh, thank you so much for being volunteers, helping and playing with the boys.
Cheers,
Edmond Ip
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