MARCH 2021
LINE CALLS USPTA SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
President's Message Jeff Miller
My Fellow USPTA Southern California Members, I hope everyone’s 2021 is off to a great start. We on the board are very excited about our upcoming SoCal Virtual Conference coming up on May 1st and May 2nd. The board has been working on this for months in the hopes of creating an interactive experience with high quality speakers, topics and engagement. There will be more details to come, but please save the date. In addition to our conference coming up, we are also hopeful that towards the end of the year we can have some in person educational events. If you are interested in hosting an event please reach out to your District President and they will work with you in coordinating it. We are hopeful to one day soon being able to get together in person, but in the meantime if you would like to put on an online event, please reach out to anyone on the board.
COMING TO YOU FROM THE AD SIDE SCOTT BURTON, REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT
As we enter the frontside of 2021 I wanted to take a moment to share my optimism for the year ahead. 2020 was a rough one for us tennis teaching professionals. In February I exhausted every effort to keep my court safe from this (at that time) new virus COVID-19. The next month as we all know, the world came to a grinding halt. I work in the public sector, Parks & Recreation for The City of Ojai. After being locked out for over a month, I began my campaign for reopening. At the city level I had no help. I began writing to our County CEO who truly wanted to support us independent contractors. After much research he (a 4.5 level player) presented my request along with scientific date to our county board of supervisors. To my surprise I was allowed to reopen on an extremely scaled back level. I don’t want to bore you with all my necessary protocol, but needless to say that liability on behalf of a city is crazy stringent, but finally I was on my way. Long story short, myself and many of you have survived the year. It’s been the most difficult time in my career. I’m certain the same is true for you. I want to take this opportunity to thank the USPTA and the USTA for their efforts to provide the 2021 dues subsidy. It’s actually a big thing to me. Once the qualifications were met, I felt a sigh of relief. Like many of you, I still need to carry additional insurance, but to have our dues paid for the coming year was welcome. Looking ahead to 2021 is encouraging for us. Tennis has enjoyed a mini-boom during COVID, and many of us found our classes full of young baseball players as well as other “Team” sports converts. We have had a captive audience, coach! Now it’s up to us to keep the focus on fun for them while sneaking in the educational component. Covid has forced us to reinvent ourselves somewhat. I don’t know about you, but my lesson plans relied heavily on student-to-student skills and drills with many assistants oncourt with me. Even dynamic warm-ups changed completely. Fortunate for us we were and are prepared for just about anything once we close the gate behind our students. We are, after all, USPTA. SoI just want to wish you all a healthy prosperous year ahead. Remain creative and rely on the great educational opportunities provided by our association. You've Got This! Though we are far from “Out of the woods,” I want us to remain optimistic and focused to do the absolute best for tennis. My hope is that the rest will slowly take care of itself. My best to you all and I look forward to serving and seeing you on our virtual conference May 1st. and 2nd.
DISTRICT NEWS District 1 Happenings Welcome to 2021 District 1 - hope you and your family continues to stay safe and well both on/off the tennis court! Excited to get through a challenging 2020 with a healthy optimism for a prosperous tennis year in 2021! I’m sharing a personal photo here from the highlight of my last year at the 2020 Australian Open! Would love to learn what your 2020 tennis District 1: Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties
District President: Martin Parkes 813-618-0466 martin.parkes@pepperdine.edu
coaching highlight was - please feel free to share with me and our district.
District 1 Happenings Looking forward to attending and making my first USPTA SoCal convention whatever the format on May1st/2nd, and making it one to remember. I’m personally working hard with our board of directors to help bring in a great diversity of speakers, create engaging topics of discussion and welcome some of the leaders within our tennis coaching industry! Hope you can join me there and earn some invaluable coach education, meet new colleagues and gain your membership credit all at the same time!
District 1 Welcomes - Otis Smith
USPTA Southern California and District 1 would like to congratulate Otis Smith who was recently named tennis director at Santa Barbara tennis club. SBTC has 12 tennis courts with 6 lighted, pool, workout facilities and cafe. Prior to COVID 19, the club hosted USTA leagues teams, interclub matches, and hosted national men’s 50s tennis tournaments. The club is celebrating 50 years in 2021. Otis was tennis director at Ritz Carlton Bacara for 9 years! 😊
DISTRICT NEWS
District 2 TWO LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL TENNIS PLAYERS AT
District 2: San Fernando Valley & Kern County
WEST RANCH HIGH SCHOOL IN THE SCV HAVE MADE A MENTAL HEALTH BLOG FOR TEENS TO HAVE A VOICE; HERE IS THEIR STORY.
Hey there! We’re Shaira and Brooke, two West Ranch seniors and cocaptains of the girls Varsity tennis team at our high school. As of July
District President: Dina McBride 661-904-6237 dinamcbride3@gmail.com
2020, we are also the co-founders of Hiraeth. Hiraeth is a Welsh word that means “a homesickness for a home that you can’t return to, or that doesn’t exist.” We created hiraethblog.com as a safe haven for teens who don’t have a space to talk and learn about mental health. Our blog focuses on mental wellness, especially during a global pandemic. We had the idea of creating a blog back in February of our junior year. It was a rainy day, so we brought our tennis team inside and started talking about our longtime aspirations. We quickly realized that we both share a passion for writing, so creating a blog was something both of us were excited to do! However, we didn’t really start the blog until remote learning and the beginning of quarantine.
We noticed a lack of mental wellness resources accessible to teens during quarantine; on top of that, many feel awkward to use and ask for many of the resources that are available. Everyone is being forced to navigate life in a time where life just isn’t normal. We’re all just trying to figure out who we are, so we just wanted our blog to be relatable and a home for teens who experience a lot of the same things we do. We thought the word “hiraeth” was really expandable and we wanted to create a community for people, leading by example—by being vulnerable and openly talking about our mental health, we hope that our audience is inspired to do the same. Each month, we post several different types of content. The bulk of our time goes into crafting personal blog posts, through which we’ve discussed subjects such as growth, self-worth, privilege, and identity. We especially love writing journals, which are back-and-forth conversations between the two of us about a wide range of relevant topics like being teenagers in a pandemic, racial justice, college applications, and burnout. Photo blogs are also a nice addition to our feed; we post pictures of our everyday lives so that our readers can feel connected to us. On top of that, we run a book club called “Homebodies” to further connect with our audience and spark conversation about relevant topics. One of our favorite books that we’ve read so far is Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. We hope to create a community with our audience so they can participate in the conversations and engage with our blog posts and journals. We have a forum feature that allows teens to directly interact with our pieces as well as an email (yourhiraeth@gmail.com) that is open to anyone who wants to reach out. If readers have ideas that they’d like to see us cover, or have a question that they’d like us to respond to, we are totally open to doing so! Along with that, we have our book club “Homebodies,” where anyone can join and read books that are enjoyable and valuable. You can keep up with us and join the family by subscribing to our site and following our Instagram, @hiraethblogg. All of these features are posted on hiraethblog.com.
DISTRICT NEWS
District 3: Los Angeles & Immediate Suburbs , Beach Cities (Malibu to Marina del Rey)
District 3 We are so excited to bring you the 2021 virtual conference. The dates are set for May 1-2 and the sessions will be held Saturday and Sunday from 1-5 p.m.. The speaker line-up is a knock-out this year including Dr. Sean Drake, Jeff Salzenstein,Ken DeHart, Allistair McCaw, Amanda Fink, Karen Ronney, Dina McBride, Dave Hagler and Ryan Redondo. Each session will be interactive and will require attendee participation. We are anticipating this virtual conference to be a
District President: Matt Jones 323-842-5592 mattjstennis@gmail.com
lot of fun, as well as a wealth of knowledge. The registration information will be out in the coming weeks so make sure you mark your calendar now and keep an eye out for the registration. We look forward to 'seeing' you all there! If you have any news or anything you'd like to promote, please reach out; the contact information is listed here.
DISTRICT NEWS Follow us for the latest news and happenings.
District 4 Happenings The Elevate Initiative in Southern California District 4: South Bay to North Orange County (Including Fullerton & Huntington Beach District President: Rhonda Rabanal 424-282-3675 hi@rhondar.com
When I joined the USPTA many years ago, my tester offered to be a resource if I ever have any questions. His intentions were genuine, as I'm sure all of your testers were to you. One of the reasons the USPTA loses members is lack of outreach. There is no system in place to check-in with members on a semi-regular basis. This is a problem the Elevate Committee hopes to solve. Although the certification process is changing in March 2021, steps taken over the past several months have been to contact the testers conducting exams, get a list of all the applicants who will be testing with that tester, and ask the tester to play a short video introducing myself as a tennis resource to the applicant. Once a quarter, an updated list of members within the first five years of their membership will be divided by division, then assigned to their corresponding District President to be contacted. We're still in the beginning phases of this project, but the goal is to engage and retain members in the long term.
DISTRICT NEWS
District 5 Happenings District 4: East LA County & North Orange County, San Bernadino & Riverside Counties District President: Evan Parry 951-694-2408
Greetings to all the amazing teaching professionals from District 5! There is a lot of tennis going on in our district and I couldn't be more grateful to be on the court despite state and county restrictions. I'd like to challenge all district 5, as well as any other USPTA SoCal professionals, to submit their best trick shot. You can also choose a student to do the trick shot. Please submit to Evan Parry and either evanmparry@gmail.com or on Instagram at @parry_tennis. Here are some trick serves that I posted on my social media.
evanmparry@gmail.com
Stay safe, healthy, and active on the courts! Sincerely, Evan Parry District 5 President
DISTRICT NEWS District 6 Happenings Hi District 6 pros,
District 6: South Orange County (from Anaheim & Newport Beach) District President: Tim Ludeke 714-553-1473 Timludeke@gmail.com
We hope you have the date saved for the Division Virtual Conference on May 1-2. All of the details will be finalized soon and registration will open; so stay tuned! Soon after the division conference will be another great opportunity right here in District 6. Please see below for those details: Save the Date OCCTA 10th Annual Tennis Seminar Sunday, August 15th, 2021 Steve Riggs and Dave Borelli Marguerite Tennis Center 8am to 5pm $75 registration and lunch is included For more information email riggstwins@outlook.com or call 949-232-9200.
WE ARE PARTNERING WITH TENNIS CHANNEL ON THEIR “AMERICA’S TOP COACHES CONTEST,” PRESENTED BY TOPSPIN, THE NEW TC NEWSLETTER. THIS IS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR OUR USPTA PROS TO BE RECOGNIZED FOR THE AMAZING WORK YOU DO. IN ADDITION TO THE PERSONAL RECOGNITION ON TENNIS CHANNEL, TENNIS.COM AND IN TENNIS MAGAZINE, THERE ARE GREAT PRIZES AVAILABLE FOR YOU AND YOUR PLAYERS. YOU CAN ACTUALLY NOMINATE YOURSELF, BUT THE MORE NOMINATIONS YOU RECEIVE FROM YOUR PLAYERS, FAMILY, AND FRIENDS, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES. WE HOPE THAT YOU’LL PARTICIPATE AND SHARE THE INFO ATTACHED WITH YOUR CLUB MEMBERS AND PLAYERS. THIS IS A GREAT CHANCE TO SHOWCASE HOW POWERFUL AND TALENTED OUR USPTA TEAM IS – LET’S SWEEP THIS CONTEST! PLEASE SIGN UP FOR THE FREE TENNIS CHANNEL TOPSPIN NEWSLETTER HERE TO RECEIVE ALL CONTEST UPDATES AND BEST OF LUCK!