We put a notice on our facebook page if we have rain cancellations, this will be up approx 30mins before the class start time, as the weather can change really quickly and it doesnt take the courts long to dry out if its been raining. We leave one week aside at the end of term to make up for rain for term time classes. If there is more than one week rained out then it will be a double length lesson. For holiday camps -cancelled days are refunded.
A: No we can provide them for coaching times and we also sell them in our pro-shop.
Generally go by the ages in the class. Normally the coach will have pointed it out to you if we think your child should move up an age group or level. It is also better to start lower and move up rather than be told you need to move down. It is important to our program for the good of all of the kids that players are in the right group for their level as we do a lot of co-operative excercises.
We will split the groups within our classes depending on level and experience. So for example if there are 12 kids in a class and 8 have done tennis before and 4 are new then we will start the 4 new ones in a separate group. You may repeat some of the lessons, but Roger Federer still practices his serve even though he has done it before so re-inforcement is a good thing.
We can have up to 16 kids in a class, but no matter how many kids we have we always aim to maintain a 4:1 ratio of student to coach/assistant coach in our younger classes. With larger classes normally there would be a lead coach and assistant coaches. Our assistant coaches are well trained in our teaching methods even though they are not qualified coaches we think they are really good and normally the kids like them better cause they are fun!
1 group lesson per week will only get you so far in tennis. This is a highly skill based sport. If you really want to see big improvements you need to practice with friends/family/wall at least one more time in the week. Private lessons also make a huge difference, but are prohibitive cost wise and also we have limited time slots for these, but please let us know if you interested. Holiday camps are also very helpful because they play for 4 straight days. For older kids tournaments and competitions are the ultimate for improvement.
Definitely 5 for group lessons and maybe 3-4 for privates if you are really keen, but any age is great. One of our students was in the NZ team for his age at 12 and he did not start till he was 9.
The whole tennis coaching world has adapted to using modified equipment so that kids actually learn game sense through longer rallies. Using hard balls and big courts for really young players hinders their technical and strategic development, but there are a lot of kids who think they should play big tennis because they see older kids doing it or they have done it with family members already.