With lockdown forcing everyone to be in their respective homes as life is a priority, the All India Tennis Association (AITA) has partnered with Sports Authority of India (SAI) to organise an educational webinar for coaches.

The event is scheduled to begin today and end on May 9. By the end of the educational programme, it is hoped that normalcy would have returned to the world and players will be able to go to the court and do what they love to do.

According to the information gotten from the organisers, the programme comprises of 12 sessions which will be undertaken by various tennis experts and tutors for the stated period which is two weeks from Monday.

With the lockdown situation making physical, educational programme impossible, the AITA through this means aimed to engage the tennis coaches with acquainting them with new developments in coaching.

According to the organiser, the programme’s topics include Tennis During Lockdown, Fitness Training, Goal Setting, First Aid, Competitions Format, Strategy and Tactics, Nutrition, Mental Training, Coaching Children and Youngsters, Communication and Information in the AITA Circuit, ITF Tours, ATP Tour and WTA Tour,  amongst others.

According to AITA, the director of AITA’s coach education programme, Suresh Sonachalam,  and administrator Nar Singh will launch the webinar while Gary O’Brien, Balachandran Manikkath, Kawaljeet Singh, Hemant BBendery, Chelston Pinto, Nandan Bal, Shiny Chandran, and Manoj Vaidhya are the facilitators that will take up the various online sessions scheduled in the webinar programme.

The AITA further revealed that each session is divided into two parts of 40 minutes each. There will also be 30 minutes of Q and A’s- which would be the filler between the two parts.

The governing body also said that the first part would be a solo webinar to be conducted by one of the tutors lined up for the programme while the expert may be joined in by one or more tutors during the second part.

Written by: Oladipupo Mojeed