ORC - U12 Performance: December 2015

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Happy holiday and things

Hello everyone!

We had a great wrap up this week before heading into Christmas and New Year. We focused on transition game this week, a lot of short balls were received inside the baseline and created movement towards net, players were pushed to take tons of volleys and smashes! Energy was high and it was great to see everyone having fun and be creative.

I want to take this time to thank and congratulate every single player for their hard work, effort and commitment during last 12 weeks of training. I think everyone did a great job and we have made lots of improvement in a very short period of time. I'm really excited to see what everyone will bring in the new year.

Holiday season is right around the corner, I hope everyone get to rest or take a vacation somewhere, spend time with family, friends and enjoy good food. Oh! Don't forget to go watch STAR WARS!! =)

I am sure some players are sticking around and would like to setup some private lessons. I would suggest contact Brad, Kyle or Rouba to see if one of them are available. Of course if you are already working with a coach and have setup some lessons for next couple of weeks. Great job to you!!

I would also encourage anyone who is not traveling away to think about playing a tournament. We have our own George Carter junior tournament at ORC in January and there will be tons of tournaments happening around the city in next few weeks. Have a look on the OTA website!

That would be all everyone! I want to wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I will see you in January 2016!

Peter Liu

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Week 11

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and maybe getting started with your Christmas shopping!

For close to two weeks we had been focusing on competing, which was done in some type of situation points play or match play. Over all, I would say players did a good job, but I would still like to share some of my thoughts.

I thought some players competed really well, even though they know this is just training matches, they still took it seriously and played with good intensity and focus. They understand how to perform under pressure or under the restrictions I had given them. They managed mistakes well and most importantly, they were also able to play while maintaining the skills we worked on for the last 10 weeks.

I felt the biggest difference between players that did well and some that needed improvement really came down to the lack of match play, tournament experience, and mostly that "fire", "intensity", "edge", or that strong "competitive mindset". Of course there are other factors too such as over all consistency, technical skills, physical abilities, etc... but even some players had all those skills, it was still very clear to see who had been out there playing and was the "Veteran"... tougher, resilient, knows how to manage mistakes, and strong determination. Or who were the "greenhorn"... inconsistency, breaks easily, gave up a bit too quickly, poor body language after mistakes (sometime just after ONE mistake!) and suffer performance drop quickly due to nervousness which were not able to bounce back...

Now I am not suggesting that we should push players into competition right away and start to toughen them up, after all this path does take time to build... but I do think that some healthy amount of tournament play and match experience needs to happen sooner than later for some players. They need to see what's out there in order to be inspired to get better, they need to go through some tough situations in order to be resilient and build stronger characters. It's not going to be easy and there will be tears, but so is LIFE!... Just remember this. Tennis is a game, and game is meant to be played. So I encourage everyone to get out there and play tennis!

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Back to our plan. This week we will be working on generating topspin as well as finding ways to create more racquet head acceleration. We will explore the techniques in order to make this work and use it to open up the court with sharp angle cross court forehand or backhand. It is a important shot in tennis and I believe it will also help some players loosing up their wrist and arm during their swing.

That's see how it goes. I'll keep you posted!

Peter Liu

Upcoming tournaments

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update on some upcoming tournaments and players that are planning on entering (as far as I know of). It would be great if players from our U12 program can join up and attend some of these tournaments together!

I also know some of players have not been very active on playing tournaments for the last couple of months. I would recommend you to check out the rookie or transition tour tournaments below and see if you can make it.

Good luck and have fun to everyone that is out there competing! We are proud of you!

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ACE U12 Provincial Circuit *** (3 Stars)

December 11th-13th

ACE Burlington

OTA Entry Link

ACE U12 Rogers Rookie Tour December 13th

December 13th

ACE Burlington

OTA Entry link

ACE U12 Provincial Circuit *** (3 star)

December 18th-20th

ACE Burlington

OTA Entry Link

Blackmore U12, U16 Transition Tour **