What is the Junior Development Group

In January 2019 Tennis Eastern with the support from Tennis NZ and HB Community fitness launched the junior development program.  We invited 32 players aged 12 and under to take part in the Development Program.

This is why we did it

• Tennis is an individual sport and we wanted to create a team environment that kids loved to be part of.
• By training players together, the hope was that we would start to improve the player depth by getting the kids to hit with and play against players of similar ability.
• We needed to improve the physical literacy of the players so that their movement quality improved to make them faster but to also be able to cope with extra load in the future when they choose to specialize at any sport they choose.
• We wanted to take the kids away on trips to train with other regions and tournaments as a team and not on their own.
• We know that natural talent does not necessarily make you a great player.  Good character traits do, and we want players to develop these.
• We wanted the kids to make friends and have fun.

Since then, the program has evolved and some of these players have progressed in the "Nationals Group".  We have named this group the Nationals Group as their focus is to represent the region at the December Tennis NZ Nationals Age Group tournaments.

Has it worked?

Many of the goals that we were hoping to achieve have been met.  There are now several kids who are more closely matched within the region when compared to two years ago.  The team activities and training has certainly helped the players to form great friendships and there is more interaction and support for each other at our tournaments and events.  At a recent Tier 2 tournament in Auckland, we had an amazing 19 players from the group taking part in this event.  This makes these tournaments a lot more enjoyable when you have people you know and for parents to have the flexibility knowing that there are other parents there to help support each other.  The program has attracted National Recognition and we are extremely proud of what the players and coaches have achieved to date.

Next Development Group starting in term 1

We will be looking at taking on a new group of players into the Development Group so that we are able to keep developing players to achieve.  We will be looking to get underway in term 1 - 10th March 2023.