The tennis program will be run by Gold’s Gym and is starting off with two days a week for kids to practice their skills. According to Director of Junior Tennis Lisa Pento, classes on Thursdays will be taught by tennis director Naveen Singh while Pento will be teaching Saturday classes.
“We will be offering adults groups, children groups and private lessons,” Pento said. “We are very excited to be in Auburn and also to be able to offer these programs to the Skaneateles community.”
Pento said Gold’s would like to focus on the new junior program known as Quickstart Tennis, which is being run by organizations across the country. The Saturday junior tennis program will be run in the Quickstart format.
“Quickstart Tennis is a new program designed to help kids 10 and under learn and play the game of tennis quicker,” Pento said. “To make it easier for them the court size, racquet size, net height, balls and scoring is scaled down to size.”
Kids can start playing tennis almost immediately. The balls especially are great because they bounce slower and lower helping the kids have time to react and giving them an opportunity to rally back and forth, Pento said.
“This program is definitely great for the community to have, in order to develop more young tennis players and better tennis players. This method has been used in Europe for many years and has produced many great players like Justin Henin,” she said.
The junior Quickstart program will be offered on Saturdays. Classes are as follows:
Tiny Tots, 3 to 5 years: 9 to 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 to 10 a.m. Saturdays
Rookies, 5 to 7 years: 10 to 11 a.m. Saturdays
Future Champs, 8 to 10 years: 11 a.m. to noon Saturdays
“We also have programming for the older more advanced juniors,” Pento said.
Those classes include:
Rippers, 11 to 13 years: 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Saturdays
High School Development, 13 to 16 years: 1:30 to 3 p.m. Saturdays
For more information or to register for a program, call Pento at 451-5050 or e-mail her at lisapento@yahoo.com.
