Author: Steve Jones
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Celebrating Effort Over Outcome (and Meaning It)
It’s Halloween. Tonight your kid will come home with a bag of candy they didn’t earn — just showed up in a costume and collected the treats. Nobody’s ranking the pillowcases. Nobody’s posting the candy haul with a rating attached. The treat is just… the treat. Showing up was enough. Wouldn’t it be nice if…
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Why Parent-Coached Kids Dominate at 10 — and Disappear by 16
Every tennis parent has seen this kid. Perfect strokes. Quiet feet. A trophy collection by age 10 that fills a shelf. And standing behind the fence at every match — usually the same person who taught them every one of those strokes — is Mom or Dad, the coach. Then you blink. At 14 the…
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Coaching Your Own Kid: Where to Draw the Line
If you played tennis — or even if you just watch a lot of it — the temptation is constant. You’re hitting with your kid, you see the late contact on the backhand, and the coaching words form before you can stop them. After all, private lessons are expensive, you know this stuff, and who…
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The Other Parent Problem: Handling Difficult Tennis Families
Junior tennis would be a peaceful sport if it were just kids and a ball. It is not. It’s kids, a ball, and forty adults with strong opinions sharing a fence line for six hours. Sooner or later you’ll meet them: the screamer on the next court, the gossiping group chat, the win-at-all-costs dad. This…
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When Your Kid Wants to Quit: A Parent’s Decision Framework
“I want to quit.” Three words that can ruin a parent’s week. Your stomach drops. All the money, all the early mornings, all the tournaments — and now this? Before you react, take a breath. Kids say they want to quit for very different reasons, and the right response depends entirely on which one you’re…
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Why Kids Quit Tennis: The 3 Ages It Happens (and What Parents Can Do)
Here is a number every tennis parent should know: about 70% of kids quit organized sports by age 13. Tennis is no exception. The average dropout age has slid down to around 10½. That sounds scary. But quitting is not random. It happens at predictable ages, for predictable reasons — and most of those reasons…
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How to Talk to Your Kid About Their UTR Without the Stress
Quick refresher in case the letters are still new: UTR stands for Universal Tennis Rating. It’s a number — roughly 1 to 16 — that estimates a player’s skill level based on actual match results, with recent matches weighted more heavily. The whole point is fair matchmaking: a 7.5 should be competitive with another 7.5.…
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7 Sideline Behaviors That Hurt Your Kid’s Tennis
Your kid can hear you. I know you think they can’t — they’re locked in, the fence is far, there’s wind — but they can hear you. Every junior player knows exactly where their parent sits and exactly what their parent sounds like. And what they hear from the sideline goes straight into their nervous…
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The Car Ride Home: What to Say After a Loss
The ride home after a loss is the most important parenting moment in junior tennis. More important than the lesson, the racket, or the tournament entry fee. What you say in those twenty minutes will shape how your kid feels about this sport for years — and whether they still want to play it next…
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Is a Tennis Academy Worth $50k/Year? An Honest Breakdown
The short answer: for most families, no — not before around age 14, and maybe not ever. A full-time tennis academy delivers three real things: a huge volume of practice reps, built-in fitness and conditioning, and a peer group that trains hard every day. That’s genuinely valuable. But it cannot deliver the one thing your…
