Halton Junior tour to Spain (Brugeras) 2008.
We had a fantastic, energised, hard working week. Myself, Hutch and Phil took 12 players aged between 9 to 12 years old. The players from Halton are county and national standard and were playing amongst academy players from all over the globe.
We arrived in Barcelona, with all passports in check and all players ticked off and ready to go. Unfortunately the sun was not out and did seem like we had flown back into England. But hey the players could create their own heat on the court!!!!
Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday the players were playing tennis for 3-4 hours. We had 4-5 spainish coaches and our players got to experience the Spainish way!!!!! Everyballl drills, the X drill, everyball drill, X drill, everyball drill (they like repitition!!!). Our players were starting to realise that playing on clay is not easy, it is physically demanding and we had a quite a few tired bodies after each day.
Wednesday we woke up to rain soaked courts. We therefore had to play in an indoor wooden floor. Bit of a change from a slow clay court but at last the kids learnt to adapt to different surfaces quickly which they will have to to at various tournaments. Myself and Hutch decided to be drill sergeants that day and got the kids to sprint, run, jump, and do crab runs (my favourite).
Thursday our players got to play some matches. We tried to create some dual matches and to see if any of the players would break under the conditions. No -one broke and everyone seemed to enjoy sliding on the clay and trying to beat their teammates!!! Scott and Toby match of the day, toby came out on top this time!!!!!
Fitness each day consisted of laps (endurance, stretching, sprinting, core work, press ups etc etc). We also added our own fitness regime. If the players were not acting profssionally (i.e arriving on time, remembering all their equipment, leaving their court without their equipment (umm tops lying about, racket bags left!!!), asking silly questions (for example can i take my jumper off), not putting their tracksuit on after they have played. etc we made them run laps around the academy. Probably an avergae of 7 laps a day....but at least they learned and got fitter!!!!
The trip was a huge success and the kids came back with real knowledge about how to play on clay, how hard they can actually work and getting use to being responsibe without their parents help.
Bring on next year!!!!
Jemima
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