Tennis Parent Support
By Peter Farrell
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Peter Farrell has been involved in teaching and developing tennis for over 30 years. He is the author of three books on the game – ’40 Great Tennis Sessions’, ‘Directing Tennis Programmes’ and ‘Tennis Coordination Exercises’. He is a contributing author to ITF publications such as the ‘Coaching and Sports Science Review’ and the ‘Coaching Beginner and Intermediate Tennis Players’ manual.
In recent years Peter has been a regular speaker at Tennis Europe’s European Coaches Conference, and the ITF’s Worldwide Coaches Conference. He also works as a Course developer and examiner at all levels of the Tennis Ireland coaches’ training scheme and acts as Director of Development for Tennis Coach Ireland.
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Peter Farrell hails from County Wicklow in Ireland where he's Director of Development at Tennis Coach Ireland.
ABOUT TENNIS PARENT SUPPORT
I have recently founded Tennis Parent Support (www.tennisparentsupport.com). The aim is to provide parents of junior tennis players with the resources, guidance, and advice to help make them great tennis parents. The motivation behind this new initiative is that parents, while being crucial in nurturing their child’s interest in tennis, and paying club membership fees, have no organised support structure. All of the other parties involved in the game have support, but not parents – until now!
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FOR TENNIS CLUBS
In tennis clubs around the world, there is an ongoing problem of young players dropping out in their teenage years. From the club’s point of view, these children, who may have been members for many years, are hard to replace. They have developed their tennis skills from a young age, and clubs naturally want to keep them involved so that they go on to represent the club in competition, and eventually become adult members.
FOR TENNIS COACHES
Have you ever thought you would like to be able to keep more in touch with the parents of your junior players? But then you realise that, as a busy on-court coach, you just don’t have the time… Coaches also face the problem of players aged 13/14 suddenly disappearing from their programmes.
Tennis Parent Support offers a solution to these problems, by guiding and informing the parents of junior members as to how best they can nurture in their child a long-term love of and commitment to tennis.
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WHAT WE DO
1. Produce a Fortnightly Newsletter on all things junior tennis, which you can forward to your junior players’ parents. Receiving an information-packed email from the club or coach every two weeks helps develop the relationship with parents - “here is the latest from Tennis Parent Support”.
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The content will be designed to educate parents on how to keep their young players committed and involved.
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2. Offer a Personal Service whereby parents can email their junior tennis query and get a comprehensive and quick response.
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3. Run webinars and online meetings for parents, where they can get live feedback on their issues and contribute to the debate.
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As a result, parents (who are, after all, responsible for paying their child’s club and coaching fees) will know exactly how to work with their child to instill an ongoing commitment to tennis, and therefore to your club or coaching programme.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Clubs and coaches purchase an annual membership of Tennis Parent Support. Members clubs and coaches receive the fortnightly newsletter to forward to their members/students.
All group mailings/information from Tennis Parent Support goes to the club or coach for onward transmission to the parents.
MORE…
If you’d like to read more about this new service, please go to our website www.tennisparentsupport.com
and Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PFten.
If you would like to inquire about the costs involved and possibly signing up, please email Peter Farrell at info@tennisparentsupport.com
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