January 6th, 2016

Tennis Briefs(3): Powershares Orlando; PTR Workshops; More

General News Coaches Workshops Adult Tennis News

2016 Powershares Tennis Tour to Include Orlando Stop

Powershares Courier GraphicPowerShares Series Tennis, the circuit for champion tennis players over the age of 30, this week announced its 2016 schedule will feature 12 events throughout the year, concluding Dec. 3 with the first-ever tennis event at the Barclays Center in New York.

American stars Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, John McEnroe, Mardy Fish, Jim Courier and James Blake will be among the competitors comprising the fields in early events at Chicago and Charleston.

Pete Sampras, Michael Chang, Todd Martin and Mark Philippoussis were other players that competed in 2015, with Roddick edging Blake for last year’s rankings title.

The full 2016 PowerShares Series:

April 8 — Chicago (UIC Pavillion)
April 9 — Charleston (Family Circle Tennis Center)
April 14 — St. Louis (Chaifetz Arena)
April 22 — Memphis (Landers Center)
April 23 — Tulsa (BOK Center)
July 17 — Newport (International Tennis Hall of Fame)
Aug. 21 — Winston-Salem (Wake Forest University)
Aug. 25-26 — New Haven (Yale University)
Nov. 4 — Portland (Moda Center)
Dec. 1 — Orlando (Amway Arena)
Dec. 3 — New York (Barclays Center)

Additional cities will be announced in the near future according to organizers. “We are looking forward to another highly entertaining season of competition on the PowerShares Series,” said Jon Venison, co-president of InsideOut Sports & Entertainment and the PowerShares Series.

Last year Roddick won a record eight events in Los Angeles, Lincoln, Chicago, Austin, Little Rock, Dallas, Richmond and Minneapolis, taking over the year-end No. 1 ranking mantle from John McEnroe who finished on top in 2014.

For more info go to www.powersharesseries.com.

Florida PTR Tennis Workshops in Jan.-Feb.

Event_PTRFlorida PTR tennis teaching professionals will have amply opportunity to keep their skills sharp with workshops throughout the state in January and February.

PTR workshops include 10 & Under Certification, 11 to 17 Certification, Adult Development, Performance Certification and more.

Workshops in January-February:

Jan. 16 — PTR 10 & Under Level 1 Cert. Workshop, Amelia Island, FL
Jan. 21 — PTR 10 & Under Level 1 Cert. Workshop, Orlando, FL
Jan. 21 — PTR 10 & Under Level 1 Cert. Workshop (testing), Orlando, FL
Jan. 29 — 10 & Under Level 1 Certification (Spanish), Miami, FL
Jan. 30 — 11 To 17 Level 1 Certification (Spanish), Miami, FL
Feb. 27 — PTR Adult Dev. Level 1 Cert. Workshop, Duck Key, FL

Workshop skills include communication and organization skills for the coach; structure and content of tennis lessons; skills and games for 10 and under players; teaching students to serve, rally and score as quickly as possible; appropriate competition for different ages; information for working positively with parents; and more.

The Coach Youth Tennis website now serves as a prerequisite to becoming a certified teaching professional by the PTR or the USPTA. Coach Youth Tennis has been developed in partnership between the Professional Tennis Registry, the United States Professional Tennis Association, the United States Olympic Committee and the United States Tennis Association. The program consists of six on-line courses and a workshop.

To register go to http://coachyouthtennis.com and click on the “workshops” tab and filter by state, or call 800-421-6289, or visit www.ptrtennis.org.

To keep up with workshops and other Florida tennis news, sign-up for the USTA Florida weekly e-news.

 

USTA Florida President’s Message: Tennis Change is Good in 2016; Honoring Retiring Adult Local League Coordinators

By Nancy Horowitz, volunteer USTA Florida president

Nancy Horowitz

It was announced at our 2015 USTA Florida Annual Meeting & Volunteer Weekend last November in Orlando that a number of long-standing USTA Florida adult local league coordinators (LLCs) would be retiring. The section’s LLC structure as of late last year now includes some full-time LLCs as USTA Florida staff so that the section can offer a more consistent league product.

I think change is good on every level, and those retiring LLCs that have been coordinating our adult leagues for many, many years have been greatly appreciated. I’m sure they’ve seen some major changes occur during their years, and they have been so important to growing tennis in our state.

Our Section League Coordinator Sandy Marshall also expresses “great gratitude and a big thank you to these retiring local league coordinators for the passion they exemplified and their contributions over the years.” They are:

*       Carl Weathington — Region 1, Leon (Tallahassee), 25 years;
*       Gina Herring — Region 1, Leon (Tallahassee), 10 years;
*       Larry Jaben — Region 2, Duval (Jacksonville), 23 years;
*       Ruth Ann Ott — Region 3, Pinellas (St. Pete), 12 years;
*       Ginger Ayres — Region 5, Sarasota, 25 years;
*       Linda Kleitch — Region 7, Collier (Naples), 13 years.

Speaking of change, I think it’s a very exciting time with the USTA National Campus that will be completed in Orlando in late 2016 — it’s going to be exciting for the whole United States.

At our annual meeting in November we had volunteers very excited after USTA national’s Kurt Kamperman made presentations on the amazing changes that will be coming to the US Open site in New York over the next two years, and on the USTA National Campus site in Orlando.

Our volunteers have been the lifeblood of our organization — we saw it in November at the annual meeting when the top Florida tennis volunteers were recognized with our annual awards. Volunteers are a key factor in our organization and events can’t go on without them.

This past year as I’ve traveled around the state, the support I’ve received from our volunteers in the field has been amazing. The messages I received were that we need to continue to get better about communicating our needs to each other — North to South Florida, East to West and vice versa; volunteers to the section staff; and to share our successes and challenges. Communication is the key, and when a successful program is taking off somewhere, we need to know as that could be duplicated across the state.

When we share our best practices and help each other by communicating our challenges and successes, the sky is the limit. Happy New Year and let’s grow the game in 2016!

Top