Here at Whitman we have two weeks of class between the week off for Thanksgiving and final exams for the Fall Semester. For most students this is a stressful time full of papers, exams, projects and hopefully a little bit of sleep in there. It goes against my nature as a coach to be in the offseason during an important time like this because I like to be involved and supportive of my players so not knowing day by day how they're doing and how their on court off season training is going is super tough for me.
Fortunately, I am blessed to have a team (and campus) of AMAZING students who not only have athletic and academic ability, but also a ton of compassion and community involvement. So, during the fall, we visit schools to provide free tennis lessons (with help from the guys team and club team this year!), we offer low cost clinics after school and we will host a fundraising camp January 9-13th in partnership with the City of Walla Walla Parks and Recreation. All of these activities provide the team with ways to give back to Walla Walla as well as enjoy tennis and pass it along to the next generation of players. But, if you ask the team, most of them just love working with kids and have a great time.
So, on Saturday, I hosted a USTA Quickstart Tennis Workshop. About half the team volunteered half of their Saturday to learn and improve their coaching skills, it was great fun and thanks to the USTA and Tracie who was an outstanding teacher. You can check out some pictures of us in the Bratton Tennis Center for the workshop. The link is here.
