USTA Maryland Community Tennis Director Alicia von Lossberg presented a Kids Tennis Clubs workshop on September 21 as part of a “Healthy Behaviors” training series sponsored by the Maryland Out of School Time (MOST) Network.
The MOST training series focuses on new strategies for engaging young people and merging Healthy Behaviors like food access, nutrition education and physical activity into afterschool and summer programs.
USTA’s workshop demonstrated how providers can transform non-traditional space such as gyms and multipurpose rooms into a safe and fun tennis-playing environment for before-school or after-school programming. On the day of this workshop, participants used lightweight nets, rolling storage crates, and caution tape along with rubber “throw-down” lines and sidewalk chalk to turn the parking lot of the Margaret Schweinhaut Senior Center in Silver Spring into a Kids Tennis Club venue featuring four tennis courts plus stations for tennis foursquare and hopscotch, and the Tennis Skillastics game.
For more information about starting a Kids Tennis Club and obtaining the basic equipment and materials needed, contact Tennis Service Rep. Lynn Gertzog (gertzog@mas.usta.com)