Serving Up Some Thankfulness

11/27/2017

What a year!

IJP Tennis celebrated its one-year anniversary earlier this month. It’s been an amazing year, and I wanted to reflect on how far we have come in such a short span of time. This program was created to grow young, aspiring tennis players. While that is certainly happening, I realize that we too have grown a lot in the last 12 months. It did help that we had over four years of IJP Tennis, before launching our own program, to build the foundation of what we are now.

Twelve months ago, it was just me, on one tennis court. One Saturday earlier this month, we had all eight courts going with players from Red through Yellow Ball, Dynamic Athlete Performance Academy (DAPA) running the fitness sessions, and the ACEing Autism program. It was such a joy to look over all the courts and see so many kids enjoying this sport.

We also welcomed a new coach this month: Karen Fleissner. Karen joins us from the Chandler Tennis Center, where she has been working with Red-Orange-Green players for several years. She is passionate about teaching junior tennis players, and we're excited that she is joining our program. She is helping us broaden our development levels, allowing us to add more classes for our new players.

Let's not forget our players! They have all progressed and have shown significant improvements this last year. Recently, we had four players win tournaments on the same weekend! We have some players being selected for USTA development camps, and others participating in their first tournaments. We also have fellow IJP Tennis players joining up to play doubles together, which is great to see! Every player in this program should be so proud of his or her hard work and commitment.

Given the Thanksgiving season, I must say that I am truly thankful to everyone who has supported us over the last year. I see great potential and promise for the players in this program. Across all of the stages of development, I believe that we are advancing skills and managing development to help all of the players achieve their goals. And I don't limit this to just hitting tennis balls—it's also about instilling work ethic, manners, sportsmanship, and etiquette. We don’t just build great tennis players, we want to help you build great people!

Thanks again for all of your support. We are excited for the next 12 months!