North Vancouver Tennis Center – Wayne Elderton

Wayne Elderton is the head of Coaching Development for Tennis Canada in British Columbia.  He holds many tennis certifications and has received many awards, including the Tennis Canada Coaching Excellence award.  Wayne also developed acecoach.com to provide resources for coaches who wish to professionally develop and keep up to date with international coaching trends.

Can you tell us how you got into tennis and the kids program that you run? 

That was over 30 years ago so it is hard to remember. I liked helping people so went through all my coaching training and helped players to good levels.

Explain a little about your facility, number of coaches and players in your program.

We are an indoor public facility accessible for the entire community. We are also a Tennis Canada designated High Performance Tennis Development centre so we have a complete pathway from starter to international player. We have a staff of 9 full-time coaches with our top performance coaches working with our Red, Orange and Green players.

What are the core goals of your program? 

The goal is for players to achieve their personal level of excellence and learn life-skills through the vehicle of tennis. Our program is values-based with our values of Improvement, Respect, and Commitment woven through all the programs.

What activities does a child get when they sign up to your program? 

Depending on the level, they come 2-3 times a week for training and all programs have a coach supervised league play session attached. For the performance academy, they will also have ‘community building’ events like bowling nights or trips to the US, etc.

How would a child describe their time in your program? 

“Can I go again Mom?”

What do you consider to be unique about your program? 

Compared to the other programs in our area, our unique elements would be:

• Top coaches working with all levels
• Play opportunities attached to all programs
• A complete pathway

Where were the major challenges and evolutions in your program in the last two years? 

Challenge wise, we have a ‘good problem; in that we have 100’s of players on our waiting lists wanting to get into our program that we cannot accommodate. The evolutions are more about how we are better at each level developing the skills needed to move to the next level, and the next, etc. It is more a better vision of the long-term pathway rather than skills activities just for the sake of filling the specific session.

What are the major developments that you are planning or focused on in the next 12 months? 

We are trying to build more commitment to playing competitive events with our younger players. We want to better communicate the message that the training is only in function of playing. We are also upgrading the standards to get into the Red/Orange/Green Performance (as opposed to recreational) programs.

What do you think will be the next big thing in kids tennis in the next few years?

Not sure, but pretty sure that evolve9 will have something to do with it!

Wayne  is acknowledged as one of Canada’s leading coaches. He is Head of Tennis Canada Coaching Development and Certification in British Columbia. In this role, he has provided coaching training to over 1500 coaches. He is a main contributor to the Tennis Canada Coaching Certification program and has also written articles and coaching materials for the PTR, Tennis Corporation of America, Tennis Coaches Australia, and the International Tennis Federation. He is a popular speaker at coaching conferences world-wide.He is a Chartered Professional Coach (ChPC) as recognized by the Professional coaching association, Coaches of Canada. Wayne has enjoyed considerable success in his career using the Game-Based approach. As a High Performance coach, he has led provincial teams to gold medals in the Canada and Western Canada Games. His players have won numerous national titles and many have achieved full scholarships at US Universities. Some have gone on to achieve WTA and ATP rankings. He is currently Tennis Director at the North Vancouver Tennis Center which was awarded the 2005 Canadian Facility of the Year for program excellence by the Tennis Professionals Association

To learn more about Wayne and AceCoach, click here.

Find out more about The Program at North Vancouver Tennis Center

To find out more examples of best practice around the world, join us at the evolution Junior Director’s Conference – July 22nd – 24th – College Park Tennis Club, MA, USA