Over a lunch break in Pizza Express in 2016, we (Harry and Dom) decided to partner up and set up our own coaching programme - There was one rule, to inspire people to play tennis for life!
BTA (Bringing Tennis Alive) Tennis Coaching was born. We wanted to create more opportunities for children and adults of all backgrounds to play tennis, diminishing the notion that you had to be rich to be good at tennis or achieve anything in tennis. I’m (Dom) proof that this idea is nonsense but we wanted to create an environment where everyone on our programme was succeeding.
Over the years we’ve tried to perfect our coaching techniques, lesson structures, and programme format (still a work in progress) but something was missing - we were losing children once they were good enough to compete at LTA tournaments. How is this possible? These kids were improving, playing at an insane level and winning matches and tournaments!!
The LTA do tournaments all wrong!! Parents are not educated in what to expect, how to behave and tend to lose all sense of morals and manners! BTA parents excluded! Unless you are educated well, LTA tournaments are a toxic environment, where children aren’t looked after properly, and parents are too involved. They are too serious for children aged 7-12 years. They need to be fun, happy environments where children are free to make mistakes? Where mistakes are encouraged as lessons learnt to make you a better player.
What we noticed was missing, was a level between having lessons and LTA tournaments so we had the idea of BTA Allstars - where children can associate competition with FUN! Where parents can ENJOY watching their child play tennis with no talk of score, “did you win” or “why didn’t you do better”.
We envisaged fun competition, either lots of colour, music, food and drinks and a great atmosphere! Children representing their club and supporting each other through matches and challenges to score bonus points.
Children are scoring points for their TEAM, taking the emphasis off of winning individually but instead, contributing to their team by just showing up and playing.
This idea was an instant success. We had happy parents and happy children and most importantly, EVERYONE was going home HAPPY!
We didn’t want to completely take the focus off of winning but we have done it in a healthy way, children can enjoy and thrive and have room to improve and make mistakes.
Our goal is that this competitive idea spreads and that other clubs introduce an Allstar programme to their programme, so we can have more happy and healthy kids and parents in competitive environments.
Competition is a vital part of any sport but it needs to be safeguarded. If children associate competition with fun, then they will stay in the sport. If it’s too serious too early, that’s when we lose children so we believe Allstars is an investment in children’s futures’ in the game.
If you have any questions regarding this please send us an email: info@btatenniscoaching.com
Dom and Harry