ParentingAces - The Junior Tennis and College Tennis Podcast

Carlos Goffi has a very impressive coaching resume, listing John McEnroe and Mary Carillo among his successful charges. In this week's throw-back episode from 2013, Coach Goffi shares how he learned to coach, why he feels young athletes should play a variety of sports, and why it is so important for us as parents to learn how to control our emotions and body language as we watch our young players...

In this second in a series of episodes devoted to the business side of tennis, Coach Todd Widom discusses how to determine what coaches and academies have really accomplished with their players. Whether it's rankings or college placements and scholarships, sometimes you have to dig deeper to truly understand what an academy's claims truly mean. Todd offers up specific questions to ask and helps pa...

Y'all know how much I love to hear about tennis players giving back to their communities. And, when the various organizations within our sport take the initiative to sponsor community service opportunities . . . well, that is The Best! In this week's podcast, I chat with Mary Edman, Director of Community Programs for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) and Rhiannon Potkey of TennisRecruit...

In the last year, we saw something pretty remarkable in terms of Roger Federer's career. He took extensive time away from the game then came back to win 5 titles including 2 Majors and 2 Masters 1000s. Federer's time away had to do with his age (he's now 36!) and some recurring injuries that were impacting his ability to perform at his best. And his decision to decrease his playing schedule is sta...

With the growth of the internet and the proliferation of online tennis sites, it's tough to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff. Coach Todd Widom comes to the rescue! In this first in a series of episodes devoted to the business side of tennis, Todd discusses the best way for parents to see past the bells and whistles to determine whether or not a potential coach or academy is right for t...

The topic of cheating in junior tennis seems to come up ad nauseum both on this podcast as well as on the ParentingAces social media outlets. I'm not sure if that means the issue is getting worse or if we're just talking about it more, but, either way, it is something we as a Tennis Community need to act on to ensure the growth of our sport.  In this week's ParentingAces podcast, Bill Patton and I...

Seventeen year old Trey Hilderbrand and his father, Mark, joined me in the interview room at the US Open to discuss his incredible run at this year's US Open Juniors event. They share details about Trey's tennis development and his plans for the future. We appreciate the support for our podcast. If you are interested in sponsoring one or more episodes, please go to  http://parentingaces.com/wp-con...

Since I'm not yet at the 2017 US Open, I thought I would throw things back to my last trip to our Home Slam and my conversation with Tennis Parents Extraordinaire: Wayne Bryan (father of Bob & Mike, the Bryan Brothers), Steve Johnson (father of Stevie who passed away earlier this year), and Melanie Rubin (mom of Noah). These three have so much knowledge and great advice to share to those of us...

Coach Craig O'Shannessy knew there had to be more to developing players and analyzing matches than simply relying on the opinion of others. He looked to other sports like baseball, basketball, and soccer and found that those sports relied on a unified method of collecting data, analyzing it, then using it to improve performance. The eyes, afterall, don't always tell the whole story! In early 2010,...

High-performance coach Jim Harp has been around a few years, more than 30 to be exact, and he knows his stuff! He makes it his mission to learn something new every day so he can better coach the junior players under his care. He works with all levels of juniors - from the very beginners to the D-1 college bound and everything in between. In this week's podcast, Jim and I discuss his coaching philo...

Photo courtesy of Bill Kallenberg & Captured In Action What happens when two top juniors get together to form a business while giving back to the sport they both love? TennisMentors.net ! I had the opportunity to chat with Trent Bryde and Patrick Kypson the day before their week at Kalamazoo 2017 started. They took some time away from their tournament preparation to talk about their goals as t...

Professional tennis player, Rubin Statham, chats with Lisa about his life growing up with his twin brother in New Zealand and going through the juniors there then transitioning to a life on the pro tour. A few years into his career, Rubin and his twin, Oliver, noticed that they were spending in excess of $17,000 per year on stringing, almost half of their overall prize money. They decided to find...

The Tour Level Program was born of a vision to bring together tennis experts from around the world and to make the program accessible globally to junior, collegiate and professional tennis players. The program experts' collaborative approach enables you to add to your existing team while maintaining great synergy. Using online platforms such as Skype, they are able to offer a variety of 'off-court...

Sport Psychologist, Dr. Michelle Cleere, talks with us about why training the brain is crucial to the overall junior development process. Her approach to working with young players is to normalize the process and help them understand that they need tools to deal with the ups and downs that naturally happen during a tennis match or during training. If all a child knows how to do is throw a temper t...

Tim Russell, the head honcho at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA), discusses how his organization is working with colleges, coaches, and communities to save and grow college tennis across the US. The ITA has developed a self-assessment tool, the Program Health Index, for college tennis programs to use in order to determine whether their team is "safe" or at risk of being cut. The assess...

I will once again be covering the BB&T Atlanta Open, the kick-off men's event to the US Open Series. This year's tournament will be held at Atlantic Station in the heart of Atlanta's Midtown district July 22-30, 2017. For more information on the tournament, go to http://www.bbtatlantaopen.com. At this year's Media Day, I had the opportunity to chat with Young Guns Chris Eubanks and Trent Bryde...

Two-time Australian Open Champion, Johan Kriek, has been working hard for the past several years to change how we train junior tennis players here in the US. Last year, he moved his academy from Charlotte, NC down to the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, FL in order to maximize the opportunity for young players to train and learn. This summer, Johan is partnering with Ten-Pro Gl...

My dear friend, Sol Schwartz, passed away suddenly in March 2016, and a group of us decided to honor his legacy and try to continue his life's work by creating a very special junior tennis tournament. The inaugural tournament was held in Sol's hometown of Baltimore in August of 2016. This year, we are excited to expand the tournament to two cities: Atlanta July 17-19 and Baltimore August 12-13. In...

Should we parents push our kids to be fiercely competitive? Or should we protect them from the knockouts?  In Part 8 of our conversation, John Falbo is of the opinion that not only should we push our kids to be competitive but it is also OUR RESPONSIBILITY as parents to do so in order for them to be successful in life. As usual, John doesn't mince words, and some may find his opinions offensive, b...

Like most of us Tennis Parents, Lindsay Lee Waters (who also happens to be a touring pro) found herself spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with her son's junior tournament scheduling. Between searching for tournaments on TennisLink, UTR, and other sites then choosing which tournaments were appropriate given her son's current level then signing up without missing the deadline then checki...

Dave Mullins comes from an extensive tennis background, both as a player and as a coach. He is originally from Dublin, Ireland, and came to the US to play college tennis. He wound up in the world of college coaching, having a stellar career at the University of Oklahoma as the head women's coach. A couple of years ago, Dave retired from coaching and returned with his wife and two children to Dubli...

The past 12 days at the NCAAs at the University of Georgia have been incredible! The level of tennis and sportsmanship exhibited by the student-athletes, coaches, and fans (well, mostly!) has been superb. I ran into some old friends (including Stanford Super Fan, Cliff Hayashi !) and made some new ones. I even had the opportunity to meet some long-time digital friends in person - including College...

PlaySight Head of Sales Racquet Sports, Josh Graves, grew up in tennis. Upon graduating from Northwestern where he played #1 for the men's tennis team, he sought a job. Using the vast store of resources he developed throughout his tennis career, he landed his ideal job: working with a cutting-edge tech company in the tennis arena. PlaySight has really changed since I was first introduced to it at...

On July 28, 2015, Tim Siegel received a phone call that tragically changed his life. In this week's ParentingAces podcast, Tim talks about his son, Luke's, golf cart accident and how his family has turned such a horrific event into a foundation dedicated to helping others. Tim grew up in tennis, achieving the highest level as a junior player, college player, and on the pro tour before moving into...

This week, the world lost a great man, a great supporter of tennis, and the Tennis Parent I aspired to be when Steve Johnson, Sr. passed away. I first met Steve at the NCAA Championships in Athens, GA when he was on a panel for parents and high school-age players who were interested in learning more about college tennis. After the panel discussion, my husband and I spoke with Steve and thanked him...