MINI-STARS!

So last week at tennis, Coach Vicki came up to me after his pee-wee tennis class and said that Mason should be moved up to beginners tennis and/or can join Mini-Stars.  Both classes are for 6 to 10 year olds, but she said he was definitely ready.  Mini-stars is where the kids play out points and even play actual games against each other.  The Beginners class would be just like the pee-wee class but older kids.  They do lots of drills, and only hitting the ball at the end of the class.  Mini-Stars was at 9:30 and Beginners was at 10:30.

We talked about it all week.  I told him that the other kids might be a lot better than he is, but that is because they had been playing for a lot longer than he had, and so on.  He was just super excited that the kids would be older and that he would be able to hit over the net a lot.  He didn't have any hesitation and not the least bit of anxiety about it.

The Mini-stars class was AWESOME!  It was the perfect mix of kids - 3 boys and 3 girls.  The boys seemed to be all 6, maybe one was 7.  The girls were 6, 7, and 8 (with the 8 year old being the weakest of the players).  They play "10 and under" tennis at this place, which is the reason I am there.  I think I blogged about the 10 and under business a while ago.

After the normal warm up and ball drills, they got to hit a ton of balls back and forth.  That is exactly what Mason wanted.  He did amazing.  Not that he was the best player - he was the worst actually - but he never once got frustrated or mad that he wasn't doing better.  I have actually seen him play much better in the past, but he was concentrating so much on if it was his turn or not, or exactly which side the backhand was, that he really wasn't as concerned with a good hit.

Mini-stars is designed to play 3 days per week (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday) and it is $126/month. That is a lot of time and money at this point.  I think we will just keep "dropping in" on Saturday's.  The drop in rate is $12.50/hour, and that works well for us.

The beginners class turned out to be twelve 10 year olds on the court.  It was not for him at all.  I let him warm up with the class because he said he really wanted to stay.  It was comical seeing little Mason standing in line with all those older kids.  I called him over to get a drink of water and then asked him to just sit with me and watch the other kids for a bit.  He gladly did and seemed so tired at that point.  I told him that maybe we should just stick with the one class, and he agreed.  I didn't want him to get frustrated (especially because he was more tired at that point) with the older kids.  They were much too old for it to work.

I was thrilled with the way it turned out.  Here are the pictures, and hopefully the youtube will work on the end.

Shuffling

Learning which side is the backhand

Playing out points

Nice eye on the ball!

Wicked spin on that one!

King of the Court!