Inspiring and Motivating Your Child to Play

February 25, 2016 | By Andres Sanchez
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For the past 10 years, I have taught, volunteered and observed at various tennis clubs around the United States. All of these facilities offer 10 & Under Tennis programs for youth tennis players, so I have witnessed firsthand how to run these programs.

There are two main challenges I face on a daily basis as a coach, manager and junior tennis director. The first is the education of the parents. The second is keeping the kids motivated to play with the proper sized ball and court for the appropriate amount of time—not when mom and dad see that little Johnny can hit four balls over the net.

Many parents focus on a race against the clock to get their child to full court yellow ball tennis. This mindset goes against the purpose of 10 & Under Tennis and the best interest of their child’s development. It's not to say it's impossible to develop a technically-sound player using the old style of yellow balls with a full-sized racquet, hitting moon balls from the baseline. However, there is a faster and more fun way of learning tennis in which the chances of a child falling in love with the sport and playing for a lifetime are much greater.

There is a stigma that goes along with 10 & Under Tennis that kids and parents say all of the time” "That's for babies," "It's not real tennis" or "When can I move up to the next level?" It is very hard to change a player and/or a parent's mindset if they believe what you are trying to do is “For babies” or “Not real tennis.” I have given quite a bit of thought to these comments over the years, with hopes to make a change. I decided to tackle the one question I had heard incessantly and had total control over: "When can I move up to the next level?" I shifted my attention to solving this problem, and I worked hard to come up with a good solution. I knew if there was a set of “universal guidelines” for all kids, it would solve 95 percent of the problems and questions I was getting from both these parents and students. The challenge was finding a way to get everyone on the same page to understand exactly what was required of a student to move up to the next level.

For the last three years, I have been working on creating and implementing a system that resembles that of martial arts. Instead of earning belts for completing certain goals, I use different colored stripes that go on the throat of a player’s racquet. Each color ball (red, orange and green) has a different number of stripes that a player must achieve before they can graduate to the next ball. Once a player has earned all of their stripes in red ball, they must complete an on-court challenge as a final test. If they complete a series of tasks that demonstrate their full development on a 26-foot court with red balls, they can move up to orange ball. This process of stripes and challenges continues in orange ball and green ball until the player has reached full court with yellow balls.

With each new stripe a player receives, an arrow is drawn to indicate what has been completed on the current stripe. For example, one stripe may require a player to get a forehand arrow, backhand arrow, serve arrow and an athletic development arrow. As the player becomes competent with all of these arrows, it is marked off on their stripe.

There is also another component to this system … the building of one’s character. There is another stripe that goes along with all of this called the white stripe, which stands for “SAFE,” an acronym for Sportsmanship, Attitude, Focus and Effort. Players must show all of these qualities during the lesson, before and after as well. As they show these qualities, they start to fill up their white stripe. So along with getting arrows to help build their tennis skills, a player is also being taught the importance of being a good sport, having a great attitude, staying focused and always showing effort in anything they do.

Back in May, we teamed up with Grips Challenge to implement and combine the stripes program I created with a program Grips Challenge has been doing for years. With more than 600 unique players in red, orange and green ball programs, it has been a tremendous success with players showing more interest and passion for the game than ever before. Parents have been loving it as well, since it gives them great feedback on how their child is doing in class and how close they are to moving up to the next class and what they need to do to achieve that next level. We call this program the Centercourt Player Achievement Pathway. The best thing that the Pathway does for our program is that it takes the child away from asking that question of, “When can I move up to the next level?” By taking care of that one question, it allows the coach to focus on developing the player to the best of their ability on the most appropriate size court for them. It shows both the player and parent exactly what they need to do technically and how they need to behave on the court before they can earn their way up. For parents and players, it is essential for them to know what they need to do to get to the next level. From a business standpoint, it’s great because it allows the club to promote to the kids that the more you play tennis, the faster you can earn your stripes.

My goal is to promote the strength and opportunity that has become available through 10 & Under Tennis, and how using an earned advancement system can greatly help your program succeed and grow. My core philosophy is to inspire the imagination of the players I work with every day and this program allows players to be inspired and motivated more than ever.

My philosophy has been shaped by my love of tennis and passion working with children. I've made it my mission to educate other tennis enthusiasts about the power of 10 & Under Tennis, and I will continue to advocate for children to develop into the best tennis players they can be, using the most effective methods to help them love the game forever.


Andres Sanchez
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