Education Reigns with ZSC Academy

January 05, 2019

With a mission to deliver high-quality sports to the community, Zayed Sports Academy follows current trends and international best practices in order to provide efficient and effective practices. Gripped by the excitement that tennis brings to December in Abu Dhabi, not one, but two internationally acclaimed tennis educators were brought in to support coaches, players and staff.

Ruben Neyens, who presented at the 2018 Australia Open, led a High Performance Workshop, a free benefit for players in our HP programme. Focused on agility, players learned new techniques that help them focus their training, movement and energy to get maximum result. The on-court sessions included topics of positioning, skillful movement and balance for the incoming ball.

Parents joined Ruben in the afternoon for a seminar called "How to Invest in your Child as a Tennis Parent" which led them to understand the demands placed not only on the child, but on the family, and how to balance these to ensure kids stay involved in the sport during adolescence, a particularly vulnerable time. The afternoon included a session for players called "Winners Learn from Loss" led by former Top 50 pro squash player Peter Pastijn. Peter also owns THE ROOM Abu Dhabi, located at ZSC.

Educating coaches is equally important to educating players. Zayed Sports Academy participated in a full day of sessions with Ruben that included basic skills development, particularly targeted at the primary ages of sports development. Several weeks later, Mark Tenant arrived to support the Mubadala Tennis in Schools Programme, which is operated by Zayed Sports Academy, involving 24 of the Ministry of Education's PE Leaders from around the country. The session highlighted evolution of tennis and principles for keeping all kids involved rather than on the sidelines during lessons.

Overall, it has been a busy few weeks for tennis and everyone is eager to put the skills they learned into action as Term 2 begins.