With Wimbledon just behind us, tennis has been a big focus in the world of sports as of late.  Here at Camp Starlight, tennis is a big deal too.  Everyday, our courts are busy from sun-up to sundown.  Campers can also be spotted trying to improve their game during free time, such as shower hour and, recently, many of our more passionate tennis players got to spend two days focusing on their skills during the Tennis StarCamp.  With so much enthusiasm about tennis here at Camp Starlight, we decided to check in with Starlight Tennis Director Gary Donnelley to talk tennis, and he was eager to brag about the immense popularity that tennis enjoys here at Camp Starlight.

Gary estimates that “at least 20% of campers are putting in a lot of time and effort to improve their tennis game this year.”  Those are some serious numbers for Gary, who says that his goals coming into this summerwere to attract and maintain large numbers of campers to Option and Super 6^th.  So far, the numbers are exceeding his expectations.

Gary credits a good deal of the success of the Tennis program this summer to his amazing staff, whom he says is very high energy and vocal, both effective qualities in good tennis coaching.  And Gary knows good coaching.  He’s a former professional player and Wimbledon finalist who has spent the past twenty-two years as a coach.  Back in his home state of Arizona, he owns a tennis camp that he runs during the winter months.

Even though we’re still in the first half of the summer, Gary says his proudest moment as a Program Head so far this summer was seeing the Senior Boys win their first match.  As focused on the details of seeing individual campers and divisions succeed, he’s also very focused on the big picture.  He says that he ultimately hopes to take away many of the same things at the end of this summer that he took away from last summer;  to continue having a great time while building the program and positioning both Boys and Girls Tennis to springboard into next year.

Tags: camp activities, camp athletics, camp sports, Camp Starlight, camp tennis, sleepaway camp, summer camp, tennis camp

This entry was posted on Friday, July 12th, 2013 at 9:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.