December 2007 -- With this issue of ADDvantage, USPTA launches a series of articles on parent-coaches.
In developing this first special insert, we tried to anticipate the response of USPTA Professionals to information that emphasizes the involvement of the parent-coach in the development of a tennis player.
Many teaching pros are opposed to parental involvement and feel it is counterproductive to their efforts to develop a child and direct him or her without distractions. Others worry that any promotion of parent-coach roles will result in fewer lessons for tennis teachers and a diminished role for certified professionals. The last thing USPTA members want is to hand over the job of coaching to inexperienced people, including parents.
Let me assure you that parent-coaches are not a threat to your lesson base, your coaching duties or your jobs. First of all, most parents will never achieve the technical expertise of a certified pro, nor will they achieve the expertise in the general performance components of learning to be a threat to you and become his or her child’s primary tennis instructor.
However, you can’t deny that every parent is a coach in every aspect of his or her child’s life. Parents coach life’s lessons, whether it is teaching a child proper etiquette, helping with schoolwork, guiding social interaction, or teaching proper nutrition. So, regardless of a parent’s involvement in his child’s tennis training, he or she coaches that child in many other areas that play a role in creating a successful player in both tennis and life.
My advice would be to involve parent-coaches in any way that works with your particular program and teaching style. Let them know how important they are to the overall development of the player. Your inclusiveness might encourage their individual participation in tennis if they don’t already play, and it may result in their referrals of other children and parents to you - which translates into more lesson revenue!
The insert in the middle of this magazine includes several parts. After a brief introduction, the insert explains the two pathways of "Learning" and "Playing" for all players. It details the six general components of learning that are necessary to learn the game of tennis or any discipline. The "playing" portion follows and describes one of the most difficult of all topics for most parent-coaches to understand: the requirements and progressions of the competitive structure of tennis and how to transition from one level to the next. I’ve outlined the nine distinct levels of competition in simplified terms. It explains how parents and coaches can take a player from the beginning stages of Little Tennis all the way up to the ATP and WTA professional tours (or anywhere in between). It’s an absolute "must read" for teachers of all levels.
The insert also defines five levels of the parent-coach. The levels clearly delineate the varying degrees of parental involvement.
One parent-coach might focus solely on assisting as a volunteer in USPTA Little Tennis® programs, and defer all athletic development to the professional tennis coach.
Some parent-coaches are skilled at both playing and coaching and include some of your fellow USPTA pros, much like Lorenzo Beltrame and his son, who are pictured on the cover of this magazine. These people may choose to coach their own children. Obviously, these parent-coaches have more expertise than the average parent, and most of them would rarely consider turning over most of their child’s training to another tennis coach. Still fewer parent-coaches, such as Yuri Sharapova, father of Maria Sharapova, or Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena Williams, take on the full-time role of a touring parent-coach or manager. These parents travel with their children to tournaments, oversee the player’s training and generally manage their children’s tennis life.
So, as you can see, the role of parent-coaches can be part of an extremely broad landscape. Nevertheless, history shows they play very important roles, regardless of their degree of involvement.
I hope you will become an active part of our work with parent-coaches. Whether you are a parent-coach yourself, or interact with any of the five levels of parent-coaches, we believe this material will be beneficial to your coaching and to your relationships with students and their parents.
