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

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 **

December 18th-20th

Blackmore Tennis Club, Richmond Hill

OTA Entry Link

*** Daniel Cancilla from our U12 program is signed up ***

Thornhill U12 Rogers Rookie Tour with Green Dot ball

December 26th-27th

Thornhill Park Tennis Club

OTA Entry Link

ACE Super Series U12 **** (4 Star) 

December 26th-December 31st

ACE Burlington

OTA Entry Link

Aviva U12 Transition Tour Holiday Classic **

December 27th-30th

Aviva Centre, Toronto

OTA Entry Link

*** Jackson Podolsky from our U12 program is signed up ***

Peter Liu

Tournament result: 2015 TDC Cup

Congratulations to ORC Team #1 on winning the 2015 TDC Cup at Aviva Centre this weekend!!

Our team #1 consisted of 4 players and they were Matthew Yang, Even Van DerStarren, Bailey Muller, and Ola Andrea Irla-Bartyzel. Our players competed extremely well and also shown great support to each other. I am proud of what they did and I'm sure all players learned a lot from this experience. 

Our team #2 had to withdraw from the tournament due to illness on couple of our players. It is unfortunate, but we can only move forward as I know there will be other opportunities in the near future.

Special shout out goes to Claire Podolsky. Claire played for Veneto Tennis Club this past weekend. She did a great job and shown great sportsmanship on and off the court. I'm sure Team Veneto was happy and thankful for you being part of their team. Well done Claire!

Big thanks to all the parents for bring players to tournament on time and supporting, cheering for our players. I hope you all had a great time watching your child compete, learned and gained valuable information from this event.

If you have any photos to share. Please email them to me so I can post them here and in our newsletter. 

Go ORC Go!

Peter Liu 

Tournament result - Congrats to Stefan and Jackson

Hi everyone, 

Just a quick update on tournament results for pasted couple of weeks.

Congratulation to Stefan on winning his Hamilton Rosedale Rookie Tournament. Stefan was actually playing with fracture fingers on his left hand. What a tough guy huh? I give him lots of credit for going out in his condition and he must have been a real fighter out there. Great job!

We also have Jackson went down to U.S. again for his last U10 tournament EVER as he will be age out to U12 in few days. It was a tough fight for Jackson in the final against his opponent as he was losing 1-4 and managed to come back and win the match 6-4! I'm sure he was focused, kept working hard and never gave up! Great job on your win again Jackson!

That's all for now. It's great to see our players getting out there and compete. Please feel free to send me any tournament updates, results and pictures. Thanks!

Peter Liu

Week #9

Hi everyone,

This week's plan is simple and straight forward! Every class we will start with physical warm-up follow by 20 minutes of good tennis warm-up, then we will jump right into match play and see how players play and if they are able to ultilize what they worked on for the past few weeks.

Our main focus during the match play week will be helping players with their game plan, develop basic routines, feel comfortable with game play, rules, counting score, change end, dealing with line call, etc... This should be a great week for all players to experience different levels of competition and hopefully inspire them to get better moving forward.

See you on court!

Peter Liu

Understanding OTA Junior Tournaments - Part 1

Hi everyone,

There are a lot of questions around the types of tournaments, different tiers, what your child should participate in and when to move up to more challenging tournaments. This can be a complicated subject and it can be quite personal depending on your child's age, level of competitiveness, and over all playing skill level... I really don't have a short and simple answer for everyone, but I will try to explain as much as I can and direct you to some reading materials. so hopefully give you give you some ideas on how to move forward.

This is part 1 where I talk about the U8, U9, U10 group.

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Junior tournaments basically breaks into two big groups.

You have everything under the age of 10, which plays in Kids Tennis format that consist of:
U8 Red ball on 1/2 court
U9 Orange ball on 3/4 court
U10 Green dot ball on full court

Then you have under 12 and older, which plays in regular ball, full court:
U12 Regular ball on full court
U14 Regular ball on full court
U16 ...
U18 ...
Etc...

In the U10 or younger stages, there are generally two types of tournaments. Rogers Rookie Tour and Future Stars Tour.

Rogers Rookie Tour
-Designed for entry-level juniors who is getting into tournament for the first time
-Player get minimum of three matches
-No ranking points been tracked
-Does not need to be a registered OTA tournament player

More info:
Rogers Rookie Tour page
Rogers Rookie Tour Handbook
Tournament schedule and summery

Future Stars Tour
-For more advanced U9/U10 junior tennis player
-Ranking points tracked
-OTA tournament player membership required

More info:
Future Stars Tour page (handbook)
Tournament schedule and summery

Besides these two tours, there are other special event such as Future Stars Championship Series, or individual club hosted tournaments in singles, doubles, or team format. Some are open to sign up, some are by invitation only.

I would highly recommend everyone to go to the website listed to read up these materials. It will provide you more information in terms of tournament format, rules, ranking points system (if applicable).

Please feel free to comment below if you have more information to share!

Peter Liu