Report from Monster Tennis coach Mike Hon

Kung Fei Fat Choi and a wonderful happy Chinese New Year to all my monster tennis kids and their family.

It's save to say all of our children truly enjoy coming to our classes and participate in every part of the monster tennis program. Although, learning eye-hand skills and learning stroke fundamental are part of the program, making the program fun and engaging is still at the core of our program.

Over the pass several months, my Level 2 players (attended 50 hrs) had demonstrated great stroke mechanic and are able to carry anywhere from 5 to 10 rally with me, and in some case 40 rally. However, rally among themselves are still a little bit difficult as they still lack the proper control, nevertheless they are on the right track.

Our Level 1 player (attended 25 hrs+) have shown great improvement in receiving and sending ball skills such as floor tennis and other related game designed to activate part of their brain responsible for intercepting incoming ball and sending it to the designated direction. All important skills in a young children's motor skill development.

Our beginner player (attended under 15 hrs) are learning and progressing very well in our mixed ability class where the saying goes "monkey see monkey do." The best way for children to learn is through watching their peers doing the task successfully and mimicking their every move. Right now, we spent a lot of time on self rally, ie. dropping and catching, and balancing skills with balls and beanbag. At this stage, my children don't fully understand the concept of hitting a ball from low to high, and so, we do a lot of non-racket activity that will ingrain in their head the concept of hitting balls which they can later transfer it to hitting balls with racket.

I also want to comment on Coach Peter on doing a fine job in the program, Coach Peter has been teaching with us for 6 months and over this period, he had build strong relationship with the kids. His easy going personality and teddy-bear like exterior has earn the hearts and mind of our children.

Overall, I'm very please with our progress I look forward to seeing all my Monster Kids in class with a big smile and eager to run around and hit a 1000 balls.
 

Report from Monster Tennis coach Peter Chan

Monster tennis for January has been great and the cold weather has not discouraged the children from having great fun.

Monster tennis at Hin Tin Playground has been going especially well. The players there have been picking up new skills and they are already able to do return hitting when I toss the ball to them. Players are energetic when completing tasks such as the obstacle course and other warm up drills. In the coming months I hope to feed balls to them using a racquet to see if the players can return the ball.

Monster tennis up at the Peak has been going good also. Although many of the players still require assistance to hit the ball, many of the players have made tremendous progress since I began coaching there back in October 2010. As more players join the program at the Peak I am able to utilize more games and obstacle course type challenges to keep them busy. Most importantly the players are having a super time during tennis. 
 

Report from Sai Kung Monster Tennis coach Lea Lai

Since the weather got cooler, the kids had been practicing lots of loco motor skill movements like running, jumping, skipping, hopping, etc. for our warm up drills. It’s the best way to keep ourselves warm and get that excitement and big smiles as we race.

For the youngest group, most of them are already getting used to hitting the balls with the HI-5. We’ll be working on rolling and balancing in the coming weeks.

Most of the 3-4 year old group can handle the HI-5 shot now, so we’ll be practicing more of that without the stick. In addition, we’ll be training the basics of the forehand and backhand shots.

It’s good to see that the older group is starting to get the hang of the racket bounce-catch drill and the frying-pan rally. We’ve been practicing a lot of our forehand and backhand shots as well.

Lastly, we had perfect tennis weather in our CNY camp. The kids had lots of fun moving around the court and meeting old & new friends. Photos will be posted at our website soon.