I’ve been a tennis coach for a few years, unofficially since I was seventeen, then officially from eighteen to nineteen.
I learned a lot from coaching, and it’s my favorite job I’ve had so far. I got to be in the sun all day in the summer, working with kids, playing games. I liked watching the kids I coached improve, especially when they turn to me after hitting a great shot with a big smile on their faces.
I always talked to the kids like they were adults. I rarely babied them, at least as long as they could put together coherent sentences. If you treat kids like adults, they’re more likely to be mature. Kids are smarter and more capable than we give them credit for.
I found it important to balance criticism with praise. It’s important to make sure they know what they do well and they know how they can improve. If someone really wants to get better at something in particular, they will accept and apply the feedback.
I’ve had a couple of kids who tended to reject advice. If it was because they were just in tennis for the fun and exercise, that’s fine. However, there were a few kids who just didn’t respect me or another particular coaches, yet pretended to be devoted to the sport. I watched those kids act like they were better than everyone else just because they could hit a few fast balls, but at the end of the day their game suffered because they did not accept feedback.
I think these are lessons I both learned through observation and experience. It’s been a lot of fun, and I know I picked things up faster there than I could have elsewhere.