Hi Everyone! 

Back in May, I had the privilege to spend a day with the kiddos from Aceing Autism for the first time and I had such a blast! From the moment I stepped on the court, I immediately felt so much energy from the kids. Their smiles were infectious and I knew that it was going to be a great day. Since it was my first time spending the day with everyone at Aceing Autism, I introduced myself to the Program Directors in Miami Gardens Josh and Jeremy Rosner, and the kids. Everyone was so nice and immediately welcomed me into the group. 

First, we started off with a dynamic warmup (so that none of us get injured!🙈). After completing the dynamic warmup, we did a few hand-eye coordination drills. One of my favorites was an exercise where we had to bounce the ball on the racquet as many times as we could while walking from the baseline towards the net. My warm up buddy named Angelo made everything look so easy! Once we completed the dynamic warm up and reaction exercises, it was finally time to hit some balls! Starting out with mini tennis, we focused on moving our feet to the ball as fast as possible. One drill the kids worked on was the three ball sequence drill. Starting from the singles sideline a ball is fed to the player, then to the middle of the court and lastly the opposite singles sideline. This drill allows them to work on shots from different angles of the court. Everyone did a great job focusing on getting to the ball as quick as they could and once again, Angelo killed it! After working on our footwork to the forehand and backhand, we moved onto working our hands at the net. I could tell the kids had been working on their net game because they did an awesome job reacting quickly to the ball and crushing their overheads. Once we got done working on our net game to was time to end practice with some fun fitness drills to get the kids in great shape like Red Light, Green light. After fitness was over, we ended the session with a loud team cheer where everyone got together and cheered “ WE LOVE TENNIS!! ” 😃

Overall, I was super impressed with everyones effort on court and loved seeing all the kids have so much fun. My favorite part of the day was seeing how encouraging the kids were towards each other. Seeing the kids have such a positive attitude whether they were making shots or not definitely reminded me to have more of that kind of attitude on court. Sometimes I take myself too seriously when I play and in a way, it was a good reminder that tennis is just a game and the most important thing is that I’m having fun. I was also impressed with how eager the kids wanted to learn and play tennis.

I’m so grateful to have the ability to play this sport everyday and share my love of the game with others, so that they too can find their happiness on court. As much as I loved helping the kids with their games I also learned a lot myself from spending time with them. I had such a great time with the kids and everyone who helped out and I look forward to playing with them again soon! Thank you Aceing Autism for having me and can’t wait fo the next meet up! 

-Chanelle 🙂