Fun in the September Sun at Epping Forest Sportability

We had a fantastic session at Sportability on Saturday. The sun shone brightly and we made the most of it being outside on the school's playground playing Tennis. By the end of the session we had a few budding Emma Raducanu's out there on the court!

After a warm up led by Ray and Ollie the session got going with some basic skills. Balancing a tennis ball on a racket, hitting a ball up, bouncing it between racket and ground etc. The skill level increased as we went on and bouncing a ball on a racket then getting it  to stop dead on the racket was quite tricky! We then went on to some slalom games going around cones.

After a refreshment break it was on to a game of Build-a-Burger where the kids sandwich their tennis ball between two rackets. After going up and down the course without dropping the ball they then add a third person, another ball, another racket so there are now three rackets and at least two balls. The aim being to get as many as you can over several runs to build the layers without dropping any of the balls. Have a look at the photos below which probably demonstrate it a lot better than my explanation does.

After another drinks break we put up the Tennis nets for a couple of games of King / Queen of the Court. This is where the kids line up to hit a ball back over the net. The ball is thrown over by one of the coaches and the child must return it into the court without being caught. If they succeed they go to the back of the line and await the next round. Fail to return the ball in to the court or get caught then you join the catching team on the other side of the court.
In the end the last girl or boy left becomes the Queen or King of the court.
We had a couple of fantastic games with the first game actually being a tie between King Hal and Queen Charlotte. The second game Charlotte won outright so she was definitely Queen of the Court!

Valentina returns a ball from Ollie in the first game

Ollie has a few more catchers for company as the game nears the climax

After the main break we moved inside for the last part of the session to play some Curling. The group split in to a few teams with the aim of getting as many stones inside the circle as possible. 

At the end of the session the coaches had a very tough decision as to who to award the Star of the Week award to as there were some great performances. Anand thought he was good enough but I think there were a few too many missed catches for him to win! Charlotte being Queen of the Court was also in with a good shout, but in the end the award went to Davina for her effort and attitude - she really enjoyed the whole session. Congratulations to Davina!

Join us again next Saturday to see what Alan, Ray and Ollie have in store for us, and hopefully the weather will be just as kind to us.

Davina pictured with her award