Congratulations to our U10 green ball team and our U12 "Sonic Servers" tennis team. Both of these groups from Mills Field won 1st place competing against other local teams from Florida Yaught Club, Williams YMCA, San Jose Golf & Country Club and Julington Creek Plantation teams. Way to go team! We had a lot of fun on such a beautiful day.
There will be two Tennis Team Challenges in which we will put together teams of like ages and skill levels to participate. This a great time to put your best team mates together and challenge other kids in the local area to a match for singles and doubles. You can put together teams with 4 minimum and 8 maximum players, 2 girls/2boys minimum per team. Next two matches will be:Julington Creek Plantation - Saturday, October 25th Eagle Harbor - Saturday, November 15th
Put your teams together and register to Randy Jenks first.coast.tennis@gmail.com
Matches is a 6 game set, regular scoring, tie-breaker 5-5
We had an awesome 7 week summer tennis camp this past summer. We celebrated in our 2nd week of camp "Wimbledon's Championship week" at our camp eating Strawberries, the grand slam's decadent treat minus the creme. Join us next year in our summer tennis camp. Sign ups begin in early June 2015!
We currently have one class for our 8 & Under kids on a 36' court, we have 3 full classes for 60' (orange/yellow ball) and 2 green dot ball/full size courts for our 10 & Under tennis students. We have fun playing tennis!
We wish all the best of luck to our following students at Saint Johns Tennis Academy: Alec (senior), Kelly, Camille, Kate, Harrison (senior), Nila, Sandy, Rachel (senior), Erik, Savanna, Lindsey and Olivia (senior) for Creekside High School tennis team. Go Knights!!
Martin, Mark, Ryan, Sydnee, Chad for Bartram Trail High School tennis team. Go Bears!!
Sean (senior) for Mandarin High School tennis team. Go Mustangs!!
Atharva, Mani, Mannat, Julia & Maelee for Nease High School tennis team.
Tennis lessons will resume this Monday, January 6th as normal. Please return to your normal class schedule as before the break and bring your tuition for the new month of January. Happy New Year! I expect all our high school players back to class for next week before tryouts so that we may finish preparing you for the tryout process. Please email me with any questions you may have. I'm sending out reminder emails today.
One of our teams, out of four, played in a recent USTA team tournament at Amelia Island early November. This team played in the U14 advanced level and won 1st place! Congratulations Chad, Haley, Faith, and Daniel
Our 8 & under class had a lot of fun last Thursday before our Thanksgiving break. We allowed our parents on the court to come play with their kids to see how they are progressing in our program. Our parents had a blast playing drills and games with the kids. I believe the kids want to do a challenge match now!
For the second year in a row our tennis student Marc Moreira was awarded a $500.00 scholarship "Kelly Award" from the Youth Tennis Foundation. We are so proud of Marc and his family! Marc has improved so much in the past two years and has been dedicating more time to private and group lessons in order to improve his game. He is now competing in at least one to two tournaments a month. Marc's game has grown leaps and bounds due to his dedication to practice and support of his family. Marc continues to grow in maturity in how he deals with the pressure of competition in a tennis tournament environment. He is a rock with his mental attitude to keep pushing himself to the next point even when he might be down in a game. He displays good sportsmanship win or lose and encourages those around him with great team spirit. Congratulations to you Marc! Keep up all the great work and dedication to improving your game in the sport of tennis. You are growing up to be a fine tennis player and we look forward to your success in tennis.
Every year at our summer tennis camp we celebrate the 3rd grand slam tournament of the year. We celebrated Wimbledon 2013 by dressing all in white and having the iconic Wimbledon strawberries (less the creme). Our second week of summer tennis camp is now complete, we have 5 remaining weeks of hard work improving our tennis game.
We recently finished our middle school team tennis season at Mills Field. Liberty Pines and Swiss Point are the home teams based out of the St. Johns Tennis Academy at Mills Field.
Today the Liberty Pines tennis team will play in the middle school playoffs against the Murray Middle School team for 2nd place at the Palencia tennis courts. We wish them good luck to win today in their matches. Go Wolves!
Summer tennis camp registration is in full swing! We have almost filled most of our Academy classes and Teen Beginner classes. There is still a couple of spots open but going quickly! We still have plenty of room at Mills Field for our QuickStart classes for ages 10 and Under. Register now to secure your spot in our camp!
The Academy will be sending a U14 intermediate team to Plantation, Florida this next weekend to compete in the USTA JTT Winter sectionals tournament. Next Friday we will hit the road for a 5 hour trip to South Florida (near Ft. Lauderdale) over the MLK weekend. We hope to have a successful weekend of great tennis and fun hanging out as a team! I will personally coach this team of 7 named the "Topspin Terminators". Wish us luck! We hope to finish in the finals and we promise to take pictures and post them next week.
Good luck Topspin Terminators!
Coach Heather Lester St. Johns Tennis Academy
All tennis clinics resume back to normal Monday, January 7th! We look forward to teaching and playing tennis with all our students after a long break from the holidays. WE WILL BE CLOSED MONDAY, JANUARY 21ST FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY!
High School tennis tryouts are upon us. If you are a high school student in the Academy we understand that tryouts will begin soon. We want our students to attend clinic for as long as you can before they find out if they are on their respective teams. Parents may send in two weeks of tuition this month, which is 1/2 your normal tuition. If they are able to stay longer we will pro-rate your tuition to that amount.
Please stay tuned for "The Academy" new tennis schedule coming out the end of this month.
Thank you, Heather Lester
I love to highlight my tennis players at the St. Johns Tennis Academy. Whether its a story about a recent happening, or a players accomplishment in match play, or development in becoming a better tennis player. Most likely, with these small stories to becoming a tennis champion entails a lengthy history of a lot of hard work and private lessons to developing a great tennis player. I would like to introduce to you one of our current tournament players, Sean Diegan. Sean has been practicing and playing with us for about two years now at St. Johns Tennis Academy. Since 2007 Sean has played 104 USTA sanctioned events including local, Super Series, State closed, and designated tournaments. He has made 36 singles and doubles finals winning 18 of those events. Folks, this is not an easy task! When you commit to playing tennis tournaments you must take on many weekends of disciplined focus and drive to take on challenging other tennis players, sometimes opponents that have beat you in the past and sometimes players you've never met before. The suspense and anxiety of figuring out what strategy you will choose to defeat each player in your draw one by one to reach the finals in one weekend. With this comes a rearranging of you and your families schedules, time, expenses and responsibilities of keeping up your school life and grades and less social time with your friends.
Sean started playing tennis when he was a young lad (I can say that because his dad is British), he soon started playing competitively in USA Junior Team tennis at age 6 and also played in junior grand prix events. He is now a junior in high school and has played No. 2 for Mandarin High his first 2 years and this past year made the district finals in both singles and doubles. Sean has made the top 100 rank in every age division 10's through 16's, and is currently reached the #83 ranking in Florida for the 16's!
In the mean time, Sean is working hard to improve his all court game, his ranking and aspiring to bigger events. He is devoted to his family and faith and I am happy to call his family my friends.
With this hard work there is hope for a future in tennis, attaining a sense of accomplishment in being the very best you can be with what passion God has given you. We hope for his future in collegiate tennis and beyond as a young man and a future world class tennis player.
Marc Moreira is one of current academy students. Marc joined us at Mills Field almost one year ago and practices with us 4 hours a week in clinic. He works extra hard in private lessons and is a current player in our junior team tennis team. Marc was awarded $500.00 from the Youth Tennis Foundation/ USTA Junior Team Tennis Award. This scholarship money will go towards helping to pay for his lessons and clinics at the St. Johns Tennis Academy. He is one of the first students at Saint Johns Tennis Academy to acquire this scholarship.
Marc started out as a U14 beginner player last season. His team acquired first place in the local U14 beginner league so next season he will compete in the next level for U14 intermediate.
Marc will be successful in tennis not only because of his dedication to clinics and private lessons but because he possess a network of family who encourages him and cheers for him when he plays in tournaments and practices in lessons. Family support is so important to any child who dedicates his/her time to one sport and wants to become a great athlete.
Here is a picture of one of my up and coming 8U QuickStart player Gracie. We happen to wear the same outfit this particular day in clinic. We are gearing up for summer tennis camp on June 18th.
Gracie has been in my class now for almost a year at St. Johns Tennis Academy. Gracie has moved to playing my top two courts in class and plays a competitive game of tennis. She has had 10-20 ball rallies with fellow players in clinic. I look forward to seeing her play in our QuickStart team tennis and eventually to the bigger 60' court. 
This is one of Mills Fields first U10 teams for Quickstart Junior Team Tennis. They recently played in several junior team tennis matches this past season on the new 60' regulation court for 10 & under. This team has some talented players and we look forward to several of them keeping tennis as their favorite sport to play for a long time. Congratulations on winning 2nd place for your first season in JTT!
Featured in this article is April Sanchez, one of our junior academy players. She just won second place at a tournament over at the St. Johns Golf and Country Club for 10 & 12 U. The reason my caption reads "your my hero" is because of what and how she did in her tennis match leading up to the finals of this tournament. April fell on the court during the match suffering a pull in the groin muscle of her right leg. She favored the leg after her fall but played on in the match. April is a pretty tough cookie in my book and she LOVES tennis! This is a girl who will not give up easily and fights to win in a match.
April had a decision to make after suffering from an injury but played on until she finished the match. She won it! She was on her way to the finals when the pain was too much to bare and had to withdraw. Later on she found out the leg was bruised and swollen by the doctors. It was wise of her to stop! Let me tell you that is not an easy decision for an any avid tennis player to make. It was a mature decision on her part and I commend her for playing tough til' the end and making that decision to stop when the pain was too much to bare
. Athletes sometimes make the wrong decision to not stop and they find out later that they do more damage to the site of injury when they don't rest and push on through pain. Pain is an indicator that there is something wrong.
If you can stop and rest it's more likely that your recovery time will be easier and quicker which is sweet news to any athlete. Athletes do not make very good patients!
Congratulations April! You are becoming an awesome and beautiful tennis player in the eyes of your coaches at St. Johns Tennis Academy. You rock!
Coach Heather Lester, Cheryl Keller & Bill Angus
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