Summer Camp Pitfalls By Chris Lewit ith the summer camp season just around the corner—and as a high performance tennis camp owner myself—I speak with parents every day about summer camp experiences and expectations. Unfortunately, many tennis players have a disappointing experience at summer camp and their tennis games don’t progress. Let’s discuss some common summer camp pitfalls that parents should be aware of and try to avoid.
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Too Much Technique While most smart camps play lots of competitive matches and give some tactical pointers to kids—or at least they should—many camps mishandle technique.
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A parent recently told me that her daughter attended a very famous camp in Florida known for its technical expertise. The coaches changed her daughter’s strokes and when she came home, her game and confidence suffered. Watch out for programs that are doctrinaire and rigid in terms of techniques. These programs in the summer can really ruin a kid. If a program is very strict and narrow in its pedagogical approach, this could be a disaster for your kid. Oftentimes, players will do their best to embrace new techniques but when they come home, they are not able to maintain the new form and revert back to old habits. So what’s the point of following a new technical system, making big changes
Long Island Tennis Magazine • May/June 2022 • LITennisMag.com
for a few weeks, and then losing it all when the kid comes home? If important changes are going to be made to technique, camps need to be responsible in making those changes by analyzing if the changes are even possible or realistic given the time constraints of camp, and if the camp can provide continuing followup and support for the player who may really struggle post-camp without help. Too Little Technique At the same time, the majority of camps probably fall into this category. They teach little if any technique to summer players. The reason is that their philosophy is not to mess up the player’s game too much because sometimes technical changes can be difficult and mentally
