A four-year-old has about forty-five minutes of tennis in them, and most of that is not tennis. The first ten are the loudest: children arriving, rackets the wrong way up, a coach kneeling down to hear about a cat.
Then the class starts, and it does not start with a racket.
Balance first
The first block is movement: walking along the court lines, stopping on one foot, rolling a ball to each other across the net. It looks like a warm-up. It is the lesson. A child who can stop on one foot can turn and hit; a child who cannot, will not, and no amount of racket drilling changes that.
The ball is the teacher
By the middle of the class, everyone has a racket and nobody is being told where to put their elbow. The coach feeds, the child swings, and the ball does the explaining. Where the ball goes tells the child more than a sentence can, and it tells the coach what to change next week.
Nobody leaves a Super Aces class having been told they did it wrong. They leave having hit a ball over a net.
What the hour is really buying
A parent watching for the first time often asks when the children start playing matches. The honest answer is that they already are — the games at the end are the matches, at the scale of a five-year-old. The forehand arrives on its own once balance and a first feel for the ball are there. That is why the class stays small and why the same coach takes it week after week.
If you are deciding whether your child is ready, come and watch one. Call 778.961.2100 and we will tell you where the next class is running.
