Thursday Practice Report (31-Jan-2008)

Last week, we had the K-swiss championship all the week. We miss the training last week.

Today, we still had the enthusiastic Tommy and Oscar.
The higher form Chris and Boris joined a few of the training.
Kenny and Ivan, and two new blood called Edward and Alex.

Edward and Alex played in Ernest's Friday course last year.
I talked to Ernest and told him to invite some good players to join our players.
Unexpected, both of them played well which I can't believe they just learn tennis not more than one year.

We dried the court first.
I gave Ivan, Tommy, Oscar some medicine ball drill, in order to train their serve and backhands.
Next, we had some normal warm ups like hitting in the service box, rallying, volleys.
In the warm up, I talked to them and making some correction of Tommy's lazy footwork, Ivan's bad volleys, Alex's jumping foot, etc.

The "non-school team"players Kenny and Ivan had bad net games.
We first have the running shot, Kenny and Ivan be the net player.
I shouted and shouted, telling them to hold up their rackets and be ready all the time.
After more than thirty balls fed, Ivan felt brave to hit every shot, but Kenny was chicken: fearing all the time.

Tommy and Oscar tried their best to hit a killer shot, but they seemed to neglect the consistency. Alex had a great shot, hitting some powerful forehand. Another new blood Edward made some unforced error, but once he hit a good shot, Kenny and Ivan would never get the ball back.

It would be a good idead to have the chasing ball in two courts( as we dried only two courts which we needed). Edward, Alex, Kenny and Ivan were the first time to have this game. They tried hard. Edward and Ivan didn't get the ball back for their first few times. After many many balls, they can even hit a killer shot. Oscar did the best among the team, he showed his powerful forehand and his fastest feet. Tommy did a good job too, but he seemed to have heavy legs.

Game.
3 vs. 3.
Tommy, Edward, Ivan played against Oscar, Alex and Kenny.
Tommy tried his best to intercept at the net, while Oscar showed his consistent groupstrokes. Alex and Edward showed their best performance, hitting the ball in! This is the consistency! Ivan also had a good lob, but once being lobbed by our star of future, Oscar.

After reading Raymond's entry, I decided to give the boys to have the approach shot drill again.
Today, we had the forehand approach shot drill, which would be easier to our new comers.
Oscar and Tommy were best, as they tried many times and pracitced so many times in our previous training. Shockingly, Alex did excellently in the drill: he got up so quick and hit a powerful shot. Most of the new comers didn't know how to volley, or may be they lacked the expereience for the net game. Chris hit an extremely wide angle shot which surprised me.

Then, we started our volley drills.
Some simple volley training drills.
Even I hit the ball so hard, Chris and Tommy could get every ball back in the court. I doubted that Tommy improved a lot in the net game, but I've never seen these kind of good shots in this real game! Chris hit a crispy and solid volley, threatening me! The room of improvement of net game for the new comers are still very large, especially Kenny and Edward.

Service.
King of the court (double version).
I paired with Ivan.
Oscar and Tommy, Kenny and Alex.
Ivan tried his best in the net, which I could see his improvement in both physically and mentally. He's trying his best to improve his net game. Alex did well in my drills, but I bet he just needs some more game practice or real match, in order to show his great tennis tactic.

We ended our training at about 6:15pm.

It is the good news to me as some new blood came for our tennis training.
I had a workshop yesterday which held by HKTA, about the Davis Cup training. Derek Ling told us that the training squad of Davis Cup was quite large at the very begining. However, the team would become smaller and smaller as only the fittest player or the best can be included in the team. At the end, only Dino, Roran, Tung and Michael involved in the Hong Kong Davis Cup team.

I bet, no one would deny that the fittest and the best in the team should be represented and play in the inter school final round. However, we should have a large group of people to play in our courts. The larger team we have, the more people we could think and decide to choose to be select to represent wahyan. Furthermore, the foundation of the lower form should be built. We don't want to see any gaps between the higher forms and the lower forms. We may miss some great players every years because of the Alevel or the HKCEE, so we must have more good players in order to substitute these places.

I found that the soccer team of the Grade C ( they practice every thursday like us) involved a large number of student. I'm sorry I'm not good at soccer as Ernest or Oscar, but I know only 11 players can be represented in a match, right? They have nearly thirty boys, I see. I hope we could have more boys to be involved in the tennis courts.

This is a fact that football or basketball dominated wah yan boys' habbits in these ten years, right? I hope, one day in future, tennis can dominate wahyan boys' habbits. Maybe, this is only my dream.

All in all, I look forward to seeing more new comers to join our training in the future.

* Where are all the F4 boys?