As parents and coaches in youth athletics, we are bombarded with articles, information, and research on how this generation is playing too much. Too much time practicing, competing, and training. We are all hesitant to be the ones to lead a new trend, so I thought I would take a different angle and talk about the importance of the rest day. Do what you want for six days a week, but your athlete MUST have one rest day per week. Let’s just concentrate on that piece of it. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?! Some of us fall prey to…
Ok, now that summer is over, we are back to school, and the chaos of our calendars juggling family, work, school, and sports has officially taken over. If you are like me, I always feel like it is the sports component that sets me over the edge. Why is this? Because it is where we are the least organized. We have our work schedule. We have a “back to school night” to get school scheduled. Now, let’s create a tennis or sports schedule that is in sync with our family calendar. Before we get started, let…
Last week, I attended the USTA High Performance Coaching Symposium during the Qualifying week at the US Open. There was an abundance of information to digest, with technology, biomechanics, and performance teams, but it was Jose Higueras who was able to bring it all together and make it relevant to what we do on the court every day as coaches. Jose Higueras is widely known as one of the greatest coaching minds of all time. In his playing career, Jose won 16 ATP singles titles and was ranked as high as No. 6 in the world. Following his retirement, he…
I get to wear many hats while on-site at the USTA BJK Girls’ 16s & 18s Nationals… volunteer for social media, registration, tournament survival guide and college recruitment forum, coach to one of the players, college consultant for two players, and a former player and spectator. Here are a few of my reflections on the changes in the 35 years since I played… The tournament site looks like a professional event. The variety of ways for parents to coach their player has not evolved. Mental skills coaches have made many players robots between points. Ok, what is up with…
What To Do When Your Athlete/Child Wants to Quit? As parents, we can be creative and try to keep competitive sports fun and social for our kids. But what do you do when this doesn’t work? When you can see they are unhappy, and you start to doubt this is the right path for your child? I had this exact situation with one of my boys. My middle son had a goal to play golf at Stanford from a young age. He set his goals, did the work, day in and day out without question. He loved it…