Local tennis pro tries to introduce sport to younger age group
with free clinics, assemblies and junior high team tennis
The Hollister Tennis Transformation has already claimed one
future athlete.
Elliot Moser, a sixth-grader at Rancho San Justo, was pining to
play baseball this summer
— he was about to ask his dad for a new bat so he could start
practicing — when his father instead signed him up for the upstart
tennis program, headed by local pro and San Benito High boys’
tennis coach Chris Yoder as a way to introduce the sport to a
younger age group.
Local tennis pro tries to introduce sport to younger age group with free clinics, assemblies and junior high team tennis
The Hollister Tennis Transformation has already claimed one future athlete.
Elliot Moser, a sixth-grader at Rancho San Justo, was pining to play baseball this summer — he was about to ask his dad for a new bat so he could start practicing — when his father instead signed him up for the upstart tennis program, headed by local pro and San Benito High boys’ tennis coach Chris Yoder as a way to introduce the sport to a younger age group.
“I wasn’t actually really planning on doing this,” Moser said last week at Dunne Park in Hollister, where roughly 20 students from Rancho got their first taste of tennis, either smacking volleys back and forth or fanning and flailing wildly at the coaches offerings — mostly the latter.
For Moser, though, it was enough; the last few weeks of the Hollister Tennis Transformation — a name Yoder came up with — supplied the sixth-grader with enough evidence.
He’s officially scrapped baseball.
“Now that I’ve played tennis for a while, no,” Moser said when asked if he’s still interested in baseball.
“I guess it’s just fun,” he said of tennis.
Although Yoder’s goal with the tennis transformation program was not necessarily to swipe athletes away from other sports, the fact that at least one youngster has had his eyes opened to tennis is perhaps the best news for the pro, who is also the Tennis Director at the Ridgemark Golf and Country Club.
“I’m trying to create the possibility of everlasting fun,” said Yoder, whose personality can be so enthusiastic at times — even a bit nutty — that it is often difficult to know when he’s joking.
“The Hollister Tennis Transformation is going on as we speak,” he said.
No doubt, the local pro is crazy about tennis, though. So much so that, ideally, his tennis transformation will eventually reflect some of the other larger youth sports organizations in San Benito County, albeit on a much smaller scale. It will act not only as another option for children in the area who are seeking some sort of competitive outlet, but it will also act as a feeder system for the high school team and beyond.
“I’m trying to create some interest in the sport for Hollister,” Yoder said, “and I’m trying to bolster the high school team as well.”
Last week’s free tennis clinic at Dunne Park, which was set up through Rancho San Justo, was only part of what Yoder has planned.
The head coach of the Baler boys’ team has a free tennis clinic set up through Maize Middle School and Southside as well, with Tres Pinos possibly on board, too.
Yoder is passing out fliers for camps and clinics, plans on coaching interested individuals in the Junior Interclub (for beginners) and the USTA Junior Team Tennis (for the more advanced) competitions, and in the near future hopes to have some of his high school players properly trained so they can conduct free tennis clinics of their own.
He’s already spoken at the Elks Club, and has even reached down to the elementary school levels and given assemblies to introduce the sport of tennis.
“… It all starts at this level,” he said. “I want more students in Hollister. It’s a great game.”
Yoder’s “community-wide project” may just start with the free tennis clinics, though. For one hour, the next Rafael Nadal’s of the world can come out and receive instruction from either Yoder, Bill Parcell and Luz Bachofer of Rancho or Katie Beckett of Maize, and perhaps grasp the basic fundamentals of the sport, perhaps even take a liking to the sport.
“Just getting the kids to come out and play some tennis and have some fun, that’s what it’s all about,” said Yoder, who runs the clinics for one hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the school year.
Although the camps have concluded for the summer, Yoder said they’ll be back in action in the fall, with the hope of starting some team tennis competitions among the local junior high schools.
“By the fall, I think we’ll be cooking,” said Yoder, who also added that the tennis transformation was in response to the dire afterschool sports situation within the Hollister School District.
“By next year,” he added, “we’ll be blazing.”
Unlike Moser, Rancho eighth-grader Roberto Rodriguez doesn’t plan on giving up on his first passion, soccer, for tennis just yet, but the free camps have rekindled his enjoyment in the sport.
He’s already considering going out for the team when he gets to high school.
“I learned how to hit, and how hard,” said Rodriguez, who used to play tennis at Dunne Park with his father and brother, and was “pretty excited” when he heard the sport was being offered at Rancho.
“I wanted to play again,” he said.
Chris Yoder is looking for volunteers. He can be reached at (831) 637-0748, or by email at:
yo*********@gm***.com
.
