Time Sheet
Student Name: Elio Lezama
Beginning Date: 6-may
Organization: Total Tennis
Supervisor's Name: Devarshi Mitra
Supervisor's E-mail: [email protected]
MAY 5th - JULY 16th (11 WEEKS)
Saturday-Sunday
8:00 AM - 4:30 PM (8.5 hours a day 17 hours a week)
Total Hours: 187
JULY 17th - AUGUST 27th (6 WEEKS)
Saturday-Sunday
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM (10 hours a day / 20 hours per week)
Total hours: 120
FINAL HOURS: 307
Beginning Date: 6-may
Organization: Total Tennis
Supervisor's Name: Devarshi Mitra
Supervisor's E-mail: [email protected]
MAY 5th - JULY 16th (11 WEEKS)
Saturday-Sunday
8:00 AM - 4:30 PM (8.5 hours a day 17 hours a week)
Total Hours: 187
JULY 17th - AUGUST 27th (6 WEEKS)
Saturday-Sunday
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM (10 hours a day / 20 hours per week)
Total hours: 120
FINAL HOURS: 307
My journals
In this section I will be talking about my personal experience all all the things I went through on work during my internship at Total Tennis. I worked a total of 17 weeks during the weekends. Saturday and Sunday were my days of work but they are treated as one day since every group I taught would be under my tutelage for the whole two days. Having said that, I approached every journal talking about each group and the whole experience in both days.
08/26-08/27 LAST KID SESSION
This will be my last journal for my summer internship. My last weekend was with the kids and if it is true I did not do anything out the regular stuff I would do every weekend with the kids, it was a little sad since I felt like I did not want to leave. After every day’s session we would take the kids to the pool and we would have to take care of them but this time I decided to go in the pool with them and have some fun, even though they would always ask me to and I would say no. Some of the kids would repeatedly come every weekend and to those especially I ended up having some sort of attachment since we got to spend a lot of time together.
Overall it was a great experience for me to have worked with kids and adults on this camp and I feel like I learned some much during the summer at this job. I improved things such as my communications skills, I had to learn how to lead groups, I had to do a lot of decision in a really short amount of time and I dealt with several responsibilities that challenged me but that luckily I was able to go through.
Overall it was a great experience for me to have worked with kids and adults on this camp and I feel like I learned some much during the summer at this job. I improved things such as my communications skills, I had to learn how to lead groups, I had to do a lot of decision in a really short amount of time and I dealt with several responsibilities that challenged me but that luckily I was able to go through.
08/19-08/20 LAST ADULTS SESSION
My last weekend with the adults went with a little bit of difficulties. I had 4 very good players as campers during the morning session but for the afternoon one of them told me he was going to step out since he was really tired and he wanted to make sure he was going to complete the session on the second day. When we got to the court after lunch another guy came to the court, the director sent me another camper since this campers was too good for the group he was on before and it fitted perfectly in my group. I got a little confuse when the new camper told me that the director mentioned that the guy who skipped the afternoon session was going to be moved to a different group. Few hours after the day of tennis was over the camper from the morning approached me saying he did not want to leave my group since he was feeling comfortable in it and he had a lot of fun. I said that the normal thing was that he would stay with us but the groups are supposed to be 4 campers per court not 5 so I would have to talk to the director to see what was going to have. After that he repeatedly insisted that he wanted to stay in the group and that he did nothing wrong so he should have been able to stay.
The morning after the director approached me with two different ideas, he was going to send the guy to a different group or he was going to divide my whole group in two and was going to send another pro to take care of one of the groups. I knew this was not going to be good since they were all wanted to be together except for the exemption of the two guys that were involved in the issue. I finally got a good idea and I asked to have all 5 campers but I would need two courts, I explained the director that my idea was to jump in and play with them in two courts and that way I could keep everyone happy. After lot of talking he decided to give me a chance and I made things work perfectly.
The morning after the director approached me with two different ideas, he was going to send the guy to a different group or he was going to divide my whole group in two and was going to send another pro to take care of one of the groups. I knew this was not going to be good since they were all wanted to be together except for the exemption of the two guys that were involved in the issue. I finally got a good idea and I asked to have all 5 campers but I would need two courts, I explained the director that my idea was to jump in and play with them in two courts and that way I could keep everyone happy. After lot of talking he decided to give me a chance and I made things work perfectly.
08/12-08/13 JAMES BOND
The highlight of this weekend cannot be something else but the fact that I met James Bond and his wife Rachel Weisz. It was just a regular day with the kids till on Saturday afternoon one of the kids is picked up my a couple that looked very familiar. They went off the car and actually approached my supervisor since they were looking to have tennis lessons as well. My supervisor recognized them right away and since we became pretty close he told me about it even though nobody else knew. I know they both kept coming every day to have lessons with my supervisor, one day I decided to look around the court where they were and I notice I was seeing James Bond with a huge lack of coordination for tennis even though the image of him is that super athletic guy who can fight anyone.
Other than the fact I met this famous couple I had an easy weekend, there were not more than 15 kids so my job was even easier than before since I barely had to do anything. Warm up, divide the groups, give instructions and make sure everything was going well.
Other than the fact I met this famous couple I had an easy weekend, there were not more than 15 kids so my job was even easier than before since I barely had to do anything. Warm up, divide the groups, give instructions and make sure everything was going well.
08/05-08/06 AFRICAN AMERICAN WEEKEND
Another special weekend where all kids were African Americans. It was a great experience because I got to know about many of these kids’ cultures and the way the see the world. The majority of them were really strong overall, some of them were too emotional and homesick since they were not use to be away from their parents. One thing they all had in common was that they were highly motivated at the moment they would step inside the court. Many of this kids come from difficult place and many of them are looking for a better life and they see tennis as an opportunity. I really enjoyed working with them this weekend but regarding my work I did not do anything different from what I have been doing, taking care of the structure of the camp and making sure everyone is doing their job. It turned a little bit more difficult since they extended my day two more hours but it was nothing I could not handle.
07/29-07/30 BACK WITH THE ADULTS
For the last weekend of July I worked with the adults again. This time I worked together with another pro again but things went really smoothly. We were in charge of 7 campers and they were all, for the most part, beginners. The tennis pro that I was working with is a new guy who use to teach many years before but that had his own business. Long story short, because of situations in his life he ended up back at Total Tennis but as he told me he was feeling rusty at teaching. This was perfect since I was leading the group while he would provide ideas and create a fun environment for the group. I remember this group we had people from Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, and Great Britain and of course the US. We did a lot of specific drills were they would have time to focus on the quality of their swings and their form. The first day was a little tough for them since it required a lot of patience but for the second day they understood why we had to do it. They were able now to start doing rally and playing points, they were having more fun than what they expected and they were talking about coming back again to be in the same group. A great weekend and great experience with people from different parts of the world and I believe this will be one of the weekends I will remember the most at Total Tennis.
07/22-07/23 COMPETITIVE TENNIS
This was a great weekend were I did not do much but I watched a lot of good tennis. There were a huge group of kids coming this weekend for a special event, there was a tournament. My job consisted basically on watching the kids play and helping them with strategy before the matches, as well as some feedback after the matches. There’s not much I can talk about this days since 90% of the time I was just watching them play but I was able to see great kids who hopefully I was able to help and who would become great players in the future.
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07/15-07/16 BUSY DAY
Probably one of the busiest days at work during the summer without doubt. This weekend there were over 40 kids at camp, which meant that I not only had to do the same job as last weekend but also do in court work. We had instead of 5 groups on 5 court, 7 group on 7 different courts. This was challenging without doubt, the first hour while I was doing the warm up and conditioning to the whole group I was thinking on how I was going to be able to divide all this kids and how I was going to do to make sure all the court would be working smoothly. The fact that there were more kids help me in one way, there were 8 kids between 13 and 17 years of age who could play at a really good level. So my idea was to divide each group, send every one of the counselors with one group and I would have two of them with 4 kids on each group. I took care of both courts thanks to the fact that they could play by themselves and I just had to give them instructions and tell them what to do exactly. While they would be executing the plan I would give them for around 15 minutes, I would be checking on the other court with an eye on my courts all the time of course. There were even a couple of situations like one kids from the group of the youngest kids could not hold himself and ended up getting his pants wet. I had to act quickly so that the other kids would not notice it and would start messing with him but also I could not leave the courts since we had a big crowd and I would have to make sure everything was alright. At the end I decided to send the counselor of that court with the kid to change and I would take care of that court while I would give instructions to follow to the other two courts which were the advanced kids. One more weekend everything turned out very well, I remember being severely tired after work this weekend but I felt accomplished since I was able to go through it and felt like a did a good job.
07/08-07/09 FIRST DAY LEADING
My first day leading the camp was a little awkward since from one weekend to another I stopped following orders with the rest of the staff and I actually started saying what everyone was supposed to do. I tried my best not to act like I was the boss or anything similar but I would actually go help out explain things and make sure everyone would understand. This gave me a lot of responsibilities since I knew things would have to be well done if not my supervisor would come to me asking for explanations, so if things were to being right it was not the counselors fault or the campers, it was mine. I have to admit I felt really comfortable doing this job, somehow it came more naturally to me and I knew what to do most of the time, at time it felt like the day was longer because I was not as active on court but I ended up liking it better. I communicated with the guys that were working with the kids as best as possible making them feel comfortable and sure of what they were doing, I asked for feedback from them and that even though they knew I was in charge, they could approach me like if I was one of them.
07/01-07/02 HELLO MY NAME IS GEORGE
This weekend I worked with the kids one more time and as I though the weekend before I decided to call myself George. Believe it or not this help me a lot in order to build a relationship with the kids, now somehow I became more approachable to them and the work in court would be easier this time. This weekend my supervisor would make me lead the warm up for the whole group before diving the kids in different courts with their respective levels. Before it was him the one who used to do this but he decided to give me a shot to lead the whole group of 34 kids this time. I did some of the exercises I saw him doing before and also included some of my own to make a great warm up and condition pre-training. This made me take a little bit more of responsibilities than before and help me to feel more comfortable leading groups and communicating with them. At the end of the second day my supervisor approached me and talked to me about the great job a did, moreover he explained me that he wanted me to manage the camp and be his main guy, this would certainly reduce the amount of weekends working with the adults but also reduce the amount of time instructing in court since I would be the one making sure the camp was running how it was supposed to. I did not think about it twice and just like that “George” started managing the kid’s camp.
06/24-06/25 KIDS CAMP
My first weekend working with the kids finally happened. I was not sure on how different things would be with the kids but my supervisor liked the job I was doing with the adults and he wanted me to try with the kids for some reason I did not know. For the kids camp there were 4 counselors working with me for about 22 kids. With kids the experience was different I had to raise my voice more often and I would have to do more in order to catch their attention. My very first issue with the kids was that they were not able to pronounce or remember my name till one of them said I looked like a “George”. I decided that for my next time working with the kids I would present myself to the group and see how that would help me.
Most of the kids this weekend were really young, I would say the oldest was 11 years old, so the time in court was mainly focused on hand-eye coordination drills and exercises that would help them to have more control over their racquets and their swings. It finally ended up being a great weekend, with the kids the amount of hours on court are less than half but I would still have to be in duty taking them to eat, the game room or the pool.
Most of the kids this weekend were really young, I would say the oldest was 11 years old, so the time in court was mainly focused on hand-eye coordination drills and exercises that would help them to have more control over their racquets and their swings. It finally ended up being a great weekend, with the kids the amount of hours on court are less than half but I would still have to be in duty taking them to eat, the game room or the pool.
06/17-06/18 DO NOT MESS WITH LAWYERS
I had a very particular group in this case, I had a really old lady who was a really good player and was still able to play at a good level but you could see how she would struggle sometimes, but what else could I ask she was over 65 years old. Then there was a Chinese guy who was not as good as a player but he could put the ball back over the next and he was really strong and quick. The third guy was an Indian guy from New York City who had an amazing technique that would make you think he was much better than the rest but his footwork would mess up his game. All these three individuals were really different but level wise they were pretty even and more than that they had the best attitude to be in court and work as a group. For the last camper I had a lady who had gone to Total Tennis many years before. She made my job more difficult from what it was supposed to be since she would be complaining about everything that I would have the group doing. I survived the first day but the second day got even more complicated when during a volley drill she told me that she was a lawyer and she could suit me because of a tube I placed in the court to guide them during the drill. I was in shock and pretty scared to be honest since I did the same drill with every group I had before and in fact I learned that drill from my supervisor. Whenever she checkout she left a complaint in the front desk about me and with some affirmations that I was putting in risk the campers that I was working with. After I told this information by the front desk, the director called me to talk to me and surprisingly he told me not to worry about anything since he putted a lot of attention on my court since this person had given problems to others tennis pro before without any actual reason. What made me feel better was when I approached the rest of my campers at the end of our second day and they actually felt sorry I had to deal with her and that even though all that happened they had a great weekend with me.
06/10-06/11 RAIN LOTS OF RAIN
This weekend my experience was totally different, we woke up in the morning and it was raining, apparently it was actually raining all night and it was expected to rain for the whole day and the day after. In Total Tennis there are 5 indoor courts for them to be used when it rains or during the winter season. This days were more challenging since people were stressed out because they wanted to be outside playing and they could not do it. Also, in the indoor facility it tends to get really humid which does not make your hours there comfortable. Another challenging part on going indoors is that since the number of courts is way lower that the outdoor courts, the number of campers per court increases from 4 to 8 and also instead of being one tennis pro per court, in this case there are 2.
Anyone could think that having another pro with you in the same court would make your work easier but if you do not coordinate as well and try to do different things, it just turns out to be a disaster for the pros and for the campers. The best way to work in the indoor facility I found out to be when there is one of the pros giving instructions and leading the group while the other works out the drills and feed the balls but in my first experience I could not coordinate this with the other pro. At the end, we managed to complete the lessons and do our job but I could notice how the level of satisfaction was not the same I was able to achieve on previous weekends.
Anyone could think that having another pro with you in the same court would make your work easier but if you do not coordinate as well and try to do different things, it just turns out to be a disaster for the pros and for the campers. The best way to work in the indoor facility I found out to be when there is one of the pros giving instructions and leading the group while the other works out the drills and feed the balls but in my first experience I could not coordinate this with the other pro. At the end, we managed to complete the lessons and do our job but I could notice how the level of satisfaction was not the same I was able to achieve on previous weekends.
06/03-06/04 THE BEST GROUP AND THE GREATEST PEOPLE
On this weekend I had two couples under my charge. A half Brazilian half British guy who came with his girlfriend and together with her brother and his girlfriend as well. They were all great athletes, they told me they ran marathons and one of them was in the army. They were not the most skillful players but they could run and a lot. Since this is what they liked I spent the first 2 hours working in their technique and I asked for their patience since it would be beneficial for them and they would be able to enjoy the rest of the session on the one after.
After those two hours of instruction where I worked mostly in their ground strokes I decided that it was time for them to run and have fun. I made them play games and compete against each other and they had an awesome time for what I could see. At some point it was even tough for me since I was running out of games where they would have to push themselves physically but during the brake I talked to my supervisor and he gave me the information I was needing. My biggest struggle was when I gave a private lesson to the guy who was in the army. He wanted to improve his serve but he had an impediment, he had a bad injury in his arm so he shoulder lost a lot of flexibility. In his case, he was not able to come to what is called a “trophy position” because of this problem, which was limiting him from getting a better serve. We still work hard on it and he got some improvement on it but him and I knew it was tough to get better with that issue.
After those two hours of instruction where I worked mostly in their ground strokes I decided that it was time for them to run and have fun. I made them play games and compete against each other and they had an awesome time for what I could see. At some point it was even tough for me since I was running out of games where they would have to push themselves physically but during the brake I talked to my supervisor and he gave me the information I was needing. My biggest struggle was when I gave a private lesson to the guy who was in the army. He wanted to improve his serve but he had an impediment, he had a bad injury in his arm so he shoulder lost a lot of flexibility. In his case, he was not able to come to what is called a “trophy position” because of this problem, which was limiting him from getting a better serve. We still work hard on it and he got some improvement on it but him and I knew it was tough to get better with that issue.
05/27-05/28 SLOW SLOW
This weekend was the most inactive one I have had since there were not enough campers for me to have a group to work with and so I just had to do private lesson with people that came to the resort as day campers. Also, one of the campers had a daughter that wanted to get private lessons and I did that job for the two days as well. With her I worked a lot on serves, and her volleys. This was a 9 year old girl who could hit 100 forehands and backhands and make put all of them inside the court. She had a super clean technique and I could see she had work a lot on it. Nevertheless, she was not as good with her volley which is normal for a little girl since the strength on the forearm is a key element and she was obviously not even near of having a fully developed body.
This weekend I also helped at the pro shop at the resort, they just had me watching over the place since the guy in charge of the pro shop was on vacations.
This weekend I also helped at the pro shop at the resort, they just had me watching over the place since the guy in charge of the pro shop was on vacations.
05/20-05/21 UNLUCKY WEEKEND
Believe or not my third time working was one of the scariest I had, everything right after having such a great time on my shift before. Everything started normally, I got meet my campers who were all French bankers who lived in New York City and found out about Total Tennis a few weeks before and decided to try it out. They were really nice guys and it looked like I was going to have a great time with them. To start off, two of them were about the same level but the other two were not. This group requested to be together even if their level was different so I found myself in a situation where I had one beginner, two decent players and one advance player. Now the challenging part in this situation was not about what kind of drills or game I should do but more difficult it was going to keep them happy and having fun.
Having a beginner in courts means I could not do any types of consistency drills or anything advance since the guy would have to learn the basics first (how to hold the racquet, swing, coordination, etc.) by using time to do drills, hand or regular feeding, I would see how the beginner and the two medium player would have fun and enjoy the slow instructions and they would find it productive, but for the advanced guy it was like me teaching a college student how to add 2 plus 2. On the other part, whenever I did points or games they advanced guy would have a little bit more of fun, even though the guys would not be able to keep up with him, but then the beginner would be totally lost since he was not able to pass the ball over the net more than once.
To make my third time working even more complicated, one of the guys dislocated his elbow while he was doing an overhead shot. I felt how my heart rate went so fast and I did not know what to do, but I went to see how it was and since I was obviously incapable to do anything about it I called the director so he could bring a car to take my camper to the hospital. All his friends decided to go with him so after that my job for the week was totally over.
Having a beginner in courts means I could not do any types of consistency drills or anything advance since the guy would have to learn the basics first (how to hold the racquet, swing, coordination, etc.) by using time to do drills, hand or regular feeding, I would see how the beginner and the two medium player would have fun and enjoy the slow instructions and they would find it productive, but for the advanced guy it was like me teaching a college student how to add 2 plus 2. On the other part, whenever I did points or games they advanced guy would have a little bit more of fun, even though the guys would not be able to keep up with him, but then the beginner would be totally lost since he was not able to pass the ball over the net more than once.
To make my third time working even more complicated, one of the guys dislocated his elbow while he was doing an overhead shot. I felt how my heart rate went so fast and I did not know what to do, but I went to see how it was and since I was obviously incapable to do anything about it I called the director so he could bring a car to take my camper to the hospital. All his friends decided to go with him so after that my job for the week was totally over.
05/13-05/14 LUCKY WEEKEND
This maybe could be the best weekend of the whole summer yet and hopefully I would get more like that. So everything started like the weekend before, the whole camp watched the Director do a serves demonstration and then he divided them into the groups of four and assigned each group to each tennis pro. In this case, I found out when I met my campers that they have been coming for over 15 years to Total Tennis, so I knew it was going to be hard to impress, but at the same time I thought that they knew about the quality of the staff there and if my job was not good enough they would see it right away.
I was lucky for two reasons, the first one is that they were really good players, almost close to my level, so that made my job easier because it was just like a training session I would do, just with the difference that they were around 20 years older than me. I made them do a lot of consistency drills and things that would challenge them since I knew they could put the ball over the next, and the good thing was that they loved it. They told me that usually the instructors they had would focus a lot in the instruction and not so much playing, at least not till the end of the second day, and that the way I did it was more like they wanted to do. It is true made them do drills and games where they had to rally and run a lot but what I did very well is that I was on top of them giving instructions at the same time, what I learned from that they is that I would have to give lessons to my group that were fun, tiring but also productive for their games. The second reason I was lucky was because one of the campers was actually a multimillionaire and he gave me an unexpected amazing tip before he left together with his business card.
I was lucky for two reasons, the first one is that they were really good players, almost close to my level, so that made my job easier because it was just like a training session I would do, just with the difference that they were around 20 years older than me. I made them do a lot of consistency drills and things that would challenge them since I knew they could put the ball over the next, and the good thing was that they loved it. They told me that usually the instructors they had would focus a lot in the instruction and not so much playing, at least not till the end of the second day, and that the way I did it was more like they wanted to do. It is true made them do drills and games where they had to rally and run a lot but what I did very well is that I was on top of them giving instructions at the same time, what I learned from that they is that I would have to give lessons to my group that were fun, tiring but also productive for their games. The second reason I was lucky was because one of the campers was actually a multimillionaire and he gave me an unexpected amazing tip before he left together with his business card.
05/06-05/07 THE BEGINNING
Here I was on my first day as an intern at Total Tennis, pretty scare to be honest since my job consisted on teaching tennis to a group of people for two days in a row without any recent experience to be honest. I did some coaching back home and I know a lot about tennis but the most challenging thing is to actually create a great and fun environment so that my clients for the weekend would be happy when they would leave.
On my first day I was lucky enough I got paired up with another tennis pro since there was a group of eight ladies who were part of a USTA team and they went there as a getaway but also work in their game all together. I used this day to learn from the other pro, drills, games, instructions, etc. I was very lucky this happened on my first shift because as I said before I was really nervous since I did not know what to expect.
Luckily everything turnout very well, even though there were some of the campers that they did not want to have any instructions they just wanted us to tell them drills and games so they could play. They explained us that it was not anything against us but they have had been coming to TT for many years and that is how they liked it to be. Very good experience in general on my first chance working and now I felt more prepare to go on by myself.
On my first day I was lucky enough I got paired up with another tennis pro since there was a group of eight ladies who were part of a USTA team and they went there as a getaway but also work in their game all together. I used this day to learn from the other pro, drills, games, instructions, etc. I was very lucky this happened on my first shift because as I said before I was really nervous since I did not know what to expect.
Luckily everything turnout very well, even though there were some of the campers that they did not want to have any instructions they just wanted us to tell them drills and games so they could play. They explained us that it was not anything against us but they have had been coming to TT for many years and that is how they liked it to be. Very good experience in general on my first chance working and now I felt more prepare to go on by myself.