Welcome from Patricia + Weekly Plan 1

Hello everyone.  I am Patricia Hy, co-leader with Dragoslav Pokrajac (Drago), in the ORC Elite Program.  A brief overview of my tennis background is that I competed on the women's tennis tour for 18 years with a career high ranking of 26th in the world in singles, played in three Olympics - Los Angeles, Barcelona, and Atlanta, and was ranked 1st in Canada for six years.  Attended two years at UCLA majored in business administration.  After retiring from the tour in 1998, developed and co-lead KidZoneFitness with a pathway to a tennis development system for players to compete in Collegiate, National, and Tour levels.  My hobbies consist of funny movies and reading self development books.  A mother of two children with my husband we moved to Ontario at the end of June this year.  Very excited to be a part of the ORC coaches team and at one of the best, if not the best club in the world.



I want to take this opportunity to welcome everyone to the ORC Elite Blog.  The purpose of the blog is to keep you informed on the weekly training plan, updates on events, and more importantly to keep a flow of communications among us.  We are proud of your student athlete's participation in the program and we want to hear of their performances and achievements in tournaments.  So, please share them with us on this blog.  Just remember though, this blog is viewed by many.  If you would like to reach me in private please send me an email to hytennis@gmail.com.

Without further delay, so what is on the weekly plan menu for next week?  Learning to warm up in a co-operating setting.  Why is that important?  So glad you asked:-).  Warming up is more than loosening up the limbs.  It is consistency, organizing the feet properly to set up for the incoming balls, developing perception skills, requires focus, team work, locking in with your partner completing tasks.  Often times, we see juniors after having done their dynamic warm ups, get a couple of balls, and start hitting with each other with one ball in, one ball out and spraying everywhere.  The basis of a good consistent warm up helps players to develop good ball control with good footwork which in turn will ease the transition into situation play more successfully. Of course, if we do the same warm up drill everyday, the players are going to be bored out of their mind.  So, to keep it interesting we have specific warm up drills with enough varieties to keep it fresh and exciting.

Following the co-operation warm up, we move into group competition consisting of situation play, serves, and point play, fitness, and stretching to end the day with a bang!

That is it, folks.  Remember, you want to hear from us and we want to hear from you too.  Have a great week.