Pick Your Junior Tennis Poison

Because you can’t have at all. 

You can’t always have a quiet and respectful environment, that also contains the best junior competitors in the world, while they’re going through puberty and their hormones are running wild.

The best competitors live on the edge. They’re all in physically and emotionally, and considering that we’re dealing with kids, they’re all immature to some degree. 

If they get upset, it’s going to be hard to always control it. If you can’t handle their emotional outbursts from time to time, you’ll have to reconsider the pathway your family is allowing your child to go on.

I’m not saying those emotional outbursts shouldn’t be addressed and worked on. By all means, developing great emotional control will be key to their success. But if you’re expecting KIDS to only display positive emotions, and nothing negative, but somehow want them to compete with everything they got, against an opponent who is purposely trying to ruin their day…..it’s not going to happen.

The only junior players I’ve seen never have any negative outbursts are the ones who aren’t competing to the max. 

Not coincidentally, they’re the worst competitors.

The nice competitors.

The ones who allow their opponents to make multiple bad calls before ever getting a referee.

The ones who aren’t happy when they lose, but you’ll never worry if they’re taking things too hard either.

They’re also the ones that never progress to a level high enough where they encounter opponents that have tough parents. Tough parents that unfortunately get too involved in matches, creating uncomfortable atmosphere’s that make you question if high performance junior tennis is the right pathway for your child.

Because for the most part, those “junior tennis parents” many speak about, exist mostly at the highest levels. They’re not at your Level 7’s, Level 6’s, most Level 5’s, or USTA junior team tennis matches. For the most part, they’re at the Level 1’s, 2’s, and 3’s, and ITF’s.

And just like I mentioned that playing at a high level doesn’t give a kid the right to have a bad attitude, parents attending high level tournaments don’t have a right to be nasty and put pressure on their kids. I’m not saying that at all. 

I’m just saying if you only want nice and quiet parents all the time, and nice and respectful matches where everyone is nice to each other at every single match, you’ll have to stick to tournaments where progressing is not that important.

It’s the biggest difference I’ve noticed when comparing my experiences at the highest level tournaments vs the lower level ones.

It’s so peaceful at the lower levels. 

Unfortunately, most of those kids will not be playing any high level college tennis.

Not because they weren’t great players yet, but because they weren’t great competitors.

You could just tell they do not train at a high enough level to make a big level jump.

Earlier in the year I went to an L5 where there was only one player who I felt was hungry to achieve something in tennis. They had big come ons, sprinting from side to side, and even getting upset at themselves when they didn’t perform up to they’re expectations.

Everyone else……..complete silence with a few small negative reactions. 

There was only one referee for the entire tournament, and I never saw them called to the court.

And trust me, kids were not making perfect calls.

They just didn’t care enough to get the ref, and the parents didn’t care either. Progressing and winning and fighting and learn how to compete was not that big of a deal to anyone.

Again, I think it’s best when parents are quiet, unemotional, and aren’t overreacting to their child’s level of play.

But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the quietest and most relaxing competitive atmospheres I encounter at junior tennis tournaments are at the lowest levels. 

My dream is to have enough parents and players educated at the highest levels on how to behave and act, so that we can have beautiful environments at those stages as well.

But the fact is that when athletes are all in physically and emotionally, competing on the edge, things can get wild from time to time.

Every time I attend a high level event, kids are screaming left and right. Referees are being called to the court every 2 minutes. There are loud come on’s from some parents. Some kids are even screaming at their parents to go away and leave them alone!

Code violations for unsportsmanlike behavior are being given out. You’ll see tears after matches, and heck, even during matches!

And yet everywhere I look, I’ll see some form of future high level college tennis. Everyone is running at full speed, putting in full effort, asking more of themselves when they lost points, and clearly starving for progress. 

It’s the complete opposite of what I see at lower level tournaments.

So I think parents need to decide which poison they’d rather have.

If you’re going to support your child’s dreams of playing high level tennis, they’re going to encounter some uncomfortable situations with emotional kids or parents, that will provide for some miserable experiences. And you’re going to have to decide if it’s worth dealing with again and again, because there’s no avoiding it if you’re child wants to to make it to the top.

And for those who are considering avoiding that atmosphere because you think it’s an unhealthy one for a child to spend their extracurricular time in, please keep this in mind:

Adulthood is coming, and to succeed as an adult, people are going to have to learn how to fight for themselves. They’re going to have to learn how to compete in the workspace. Learn how to overcome adversity. Learn how to work hard enough to provide for themselves or their families. They’re going to get fired at some point. They’re going to encounter unfriendly co-workers or bosses at some point. They’re going to have to deal with people going behind their backs to move ahead of them in the corporate ladder. They’re going to have to deal with uncomfortable situations.

They’re going to have to deal with adversity.

And they’re going to have a choice to make: either fight to survive, or play nice all the time and let the world run them over.

If they choose to fight, they’re going to need to have the skills to solve their problems.

Would you rather have them learn how to fight, compete, and survive under the guidance of their parents and coaches, while they’re living under your roof, or out on their own as an adult?

Good luck out there.