Tennis Manitoba took part in this year’s professional developmental day for Physical and Health Educators of Manitoba on Oct. 21, 2022 at the Youth for Christ Centre in downtown Winnipeg.
There were 31 teachers between elementary and high school that signed up to learn how to teach tennis and help foster growth in the sport in not only class time, but also extracurricular activities. Tennis Manitoba coach Robert Kennedy, who’s been coaching tennis since 1983, led the teaching tennis lesson.
“It went really well. The participants were great and had a lot of feedback after. We basically went over controlling the ball, rallying with a partner in control, and a little bit on the technique of serving. And we did games that they can do in class or gym,” said Kennedy.
“Exposing kids to tennis at a younger age works out well. Plus for high schools and middle schools, most of the sports they have are team sports and not necessarily sports you can play for life like tennis. Kids that aren’t playing other sports, or kids that drop out of sports, might try tennis in school and want to pursue it and it becomes a matter of is there programming available for them? If we can get more teachers involved in the game and more school programs, the answer would be yes.”
