2013 SUMMER NEWS
Our Elite 2013 Summer Coaching Staff
These coaches taught 74 children, 5-18 years old, in Lee, Lenox, and Stockbridge. The U10 children had USTA QUICKSTART lessons in the mornings 2x week for 6 weeks. There were 3 Tennis Play Days on Friday late afternoons with pizza! Two U14 and two U18 USTA JR TEAM TENNIS teams played in local matches and traveled to the USTA/WMA JTT Championships at Forest Park the weekend of August 10-11. The combined Spring/Summer tennis programs brought tennis to 122 kids!
- Seventy-four children, 5-12 years have enjoyed our USTA QuickStart lesson programs in Lee, Lenox & Stockbridge this past summer, coached by our wonderful staff pictured above, and led by Summer Youth Tennis Director, Wilson Chang, PTR. The season will culminate with the Arthur Ashe Kids' Day bus trip to the US Open Grounds on August 24th and a Tennis Carnival the following day.
- We measure the success of youth program by the retention of players. This was a banner year! Our coaches were able to recruit enough players to field four USTA/JR Team Tennis teams representing the Lee CTA. Every player had to play in at least 3 travel matches over the summer to qualify for the WMA JTT Championships at Forest Park over the 8/16-17 weekend. The 2 U18 teams were coached by Tanner DeVarennes & Matthew Vaughan. Tanner's team placed third, narrowly missing moving on to the New England Sectional playoffs. Next year! The 2 U14 teams were coached by Wilson Chang and Sam Blache with all their kids playing in at least ten 4-game pro set matches during the playoffs. The improvement in level of play was quite exciting to watch!
- We were proud to have 14 children enter the national NJTL Arthur Ashe Essay Contest. The observations they made in their essays were a delight to read, and their thoughts on, "If you could follow in Arthur Ashe's footsteops and 'give back' to tennis, what would you do to give back to the game and how would it impact others?" were a tribute to the character of our young contestants, ages 6-16 years. Hadley DeVarennes won the USTA/New England Section Award for U10 Girls.
- Over 100 adults participated in our Adult Leagues, including mornings on the 2 red clay Greenock Country Club courts, and 2 clay courts donated by the Piretti family of Lenox and the Palmer family of Tyringham. Eight teams competed in in the World Team Tennis league Monday nights on the newly refurbished Lee MS/HS Courts and the Lenox Community Center Courts.
- More than a dozen adults participated in the instructional clinics.
- The Audie Furgal Tennis Classic in late June drew 118 players from throughout the county, raising close to $14,000 for Porchlight VNA/Homecare and the Lee CTA, split 3/1 between the two organizations!