High School Tennis

Last week I was a part of a professional development webinar that was discussing the attrition rate for junior tennis players. Actually, that was just a key point. The webinar was about single sport athletes versus the multi-activity approach. One of the things that came about was the high ranking junior player quit tennis after the juniors. If they did not get a college scholarship, they never or rarely picked up a racket again. They also discussed how many of them had overuse injuries, which I think is really a misunderstanding of how to periodize  a program than anything. You cannot always go one hundred percent and think you will not need a break.
One way to periodize a tournament player, especially if they are not going to participate in other activities is to play high school tennis. This is usually not as intense as the sanctioned tournaments and can really allow for the player to come back to a place where they can discover the true why they play the game. The true why could be to love the feel of the ball on the strings. If you don't love the feel of being out on the court, running around, and the ball hitting the strings, it can be very difficult to want to play. High school tennis and non-sanctioned tournaments are opportunities to work on the mindfulness part of our practice. They are the opportunities to develop the love that will carry you to play with your friends when you are in college and the weekly social gathering as you move on in life. It might also be an opportunity for you to pass something on to your children. A lot of the players who go out for high school tennis do so because they love the game and may not have access to tennis instruction for affordability or logistic reasons. They may have been looking for a sport to fill their time or they wanted to find something they could do to help them belong. Sometimes tennis players find tennis late after  burnout from another sport. 
My point for all of this is that we should periodize our tennis with our students whether they are playing at a ranked level or not. It is important that we find opportunities for them to go back to loving the feel of the ball on the strings and still being able to work on their skills. High School tennis can give a lot of players an opportunity to play everyday instead of just taking lessons. Lessons without application becomes monotonous.