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SUMMARY
Scaling of equipment has been adopted by sporting codes to facilitate young children attaining early success in playing the sport and has recently been adopted by tennis. The underlying theory behind scaling of sporting equipment demonstrates that adult-sized equipment and rules should not be passed on to young players. The reason behind this is because from a growth, development, and maturation point of view they do not have that skill level to be able to manipulate those constraints to achieve success.
Tennis skill acquisition requires the ability of the player to observe conditions and compute answers in the environment, with the task, and dependent upon the opponent. If those conditions are too complicated, young players can become very frustrated due to lack of success. The scaling of tennis equipment has been under-investigated. Over the past decade, however, more interest has been shown. To date, researchers (Farrow & Reid, 2010; Guggenheimer & Larson, 2013; Buszard, Farrow, Reid & Masters, 2014; Kachel, Buszard & Reid, 2014) have found that the use of scaled tennis equipment improves skilled acquisition, increased implicit learning, improved forehand performance, increased enjoyment, and longer play at the net for elite junior players.
In 2007, the International Tennis Federation launched its Play and Stay campaign. The purpose of the campaign was to create more awareness worldwide of scaled tennis equipment programming. Under the campaign, a program termed Tennis 10s was promoted that provided increased understanding to tennis providers involving the development of a pathway for beginner players. A traffic light analogy was presented that had three stages of red, orange, and green. Each stage includes different constraints of court, racquet, and ball starting with smaller courts, lighter and shorter racquets, and larger balls. As players improve their playing competence, the court becomes larger, racquets become longer, and the ball becomes smaller. Once players are competent in the last stage (green), they then move on to play with non-scaled tennis equipment. The overall goal of the campaign was to attract and retain more young children in the sport.
The campaign was not well received by all countries worldwide, particularly those where it was a new construct. Some countries (Belgium, Germany, and France) had already been using scaled tennis equipment in their programming, but with limited success. The resulting issue involved the successful education of the tennis providers and benefits of the use of scaled tennis equipment and its use in junior tennis programs. This has, to date, not been resolved.
The three primary stakeholders of a scaled tennis equipment program are players, players’ parent(s), and coaches of the players. The reason for identifying these three groups as significant stakeholders is based on the perspective that they live and breathe scaled tennis equipment programs daily. The three groups of stakeholders have consistent production of rich data that provide additional validity to this investigation.
To better understand the perceptions of all three groups of stakeholders relative to scaled tennis equipment, a qualitative research design was employed. A set number of questions were designed for each group. Players were asked four questions; parents were asked seven, and coaches were asked nine.
To obtain and secure the best appropriate data to analyse, 22 red, 21 orange, and 20 green players (n = 63) were interviewed, and responses recorded. The parent sample included 10 red, 10 orange, and 10 green (n = 30). Ten coaches were interviewed (n = 10). By sampling feedback from each stage colour, the most updated and pertinent data were obtained to facilitate the best analysis. Once the interview was complete, the investigator replayed the interview to make sure it was (1) appropriately recorded, and (2) all comments were understood. Then each interview was transcribed and analysed. ATLAS.ti (Scientific Software Development, 2017) software was used to identify common themes through a coding system. These common themes were identified for each stage colour for parents and players. An executive summary was then provided of each of the stakeholders giving an overall account of their perceptions of a scaled tennis equipment program.
CHAPTER 1: ORIENTATION, PROBLEM STATEMENT, AIM AND OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY OF THE STUD
1.1 ORIENTATION .
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1.4 PROPOSITIONS
1.5 CLARIFICATION OF TERMINOLOGY
1.6 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY SUMMARY .
1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY.
1.8 OUTLINE OF THE STUDY
1.9 CHAPTER CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 2: THE ESSENCE AND NATURE OF YOUTH SPORT .
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.1.1 Sport
2.1.2 Youth sport
2.2 THE IMPORTANCE OF GOALS IN SPORT
2.2.1 Participation as a goal in youth sport
2.2.1.1 The Aspen Institute
2.2.2 Fun and enjoyment as a goal in youth sport
2.2.3 Achievement as a goal in youth spor
2.2.4 Development as a goal in youth sport
2.3 THE STAKEHOLDER’S ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN SPORT COACHING
2.4 SPORTS EDUCATION IN YOUTH SPORT
2.5 CHAPTER CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 3: SCALED EQUIPMENT AS CONTRIBUTING FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SKILLS IN YOUTH TENNIS
3.1 INTRODUCTION .
3.2 AN OVERVIEW OF A YOUTH TENNIS PLAYER’S PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
3.3 A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE SCALING OF EQUIPMENT IN SPORT
3.4 SCALING EQUIPMENT IN TENNIS
3.4.1 Introduction
3.4.2 Benefits of implementing scaled tennis equipment
3.4.3 Scaling of sports equipment promotes implicit learning
3.4.4 ITF Scaled tennis equipment program
3.4.4.1 ITF 10 and under program
3.5 ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF COACHES AND PARENTS IN THE 10-AND-UNDER PROCESS OF TENNIS COACHING WITH SCALED EQUIPMENT
3.5.1 Coaches
3.5.2 Parents
3.6 CHAPTER CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 RESEARCH DESIGN .
4.3 CHAPTER CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 5: ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
REFERENCES
