Development of Quality players Essay

On a carrying out perspective, the LTA stated whatever 7.3m has been spent on delivering the LTA Performance planme. This is constitute to provide financial bear out to more than 600 gifted youngsters matured 8 to 21 years old. (LTA, 2002)The cognitive operation course is conventional of six stages. Initially beginning with Mini-tennis (4 8 year olds), then progressing to participation Futures (8 10year olds), County Futures (11-13 year olds), National Futures(11 13 year old), Academies and Intermediates (14 -22 year olds) and Seniors. The development of such(prenominal) a structure has mainly down to the former French performance deportor of the LTA, Patrice Hagelauer, and his knowledge and implementation of the French development system.Originally seven Tennis Academy centres were proposed but due to the lack of junior natural endowment feeler through this was rationalised to four centres namely Bath, Leeds, Loughborough, and Welwyn Garden city. The Loughborough a cademy solo is costing the LTA 2m. In addition to this a 30m (Harris, 2001) National Centre is in the pipeline and is due to be built at Roehampton and subject to provision operation should be ready by 2006. This is set to consist of 6 indoor, 4 grass, 6 hard and 6 clay courts, gymnasium, musician and condition support services, accommodation and medical centre. The LTA is likely to meet the majority of be for the centre although The All England Lawn Tennis Ground plc are lending a proportion of building costs.This development has been met with mixed reactions Mark Petchey Sky TV presenter commented Once again the LTA stick their priorities wrong. Unless good youngsters are coming through, the National centre depart be a white elephant. in that respectfore it has been further commented that the belief that there is a misconception that we lose gifted youngsters (Bob Brett) in the last 10 years there has only been 2 juniors in the Inter study Tennis Federations whirligig 50.One of the appoint suggestions causing the lack of talented juniors is the quality of coaches in Britain. On 2002 outgo figures only 3% of the budget was allocated to coach education. There are before long 2,100 LTA licensed coaches working in clubs in the UK (Jago, 2002). Although that may sound developed when this figure is put along side the total subject of registered player (116,588) it numbers to one coach for every 55 players. The comparison of this to the Frenchs excess of 4000 licensed coaches clearly illustrates we have some catching up to go (Jago, 2002).The LTA aims to ab initio identify talent through the nations club system. Yet the current established club structure is give behind that of France and Germany. ( general anatomy 5) France has some 9,200 clubs compared to the 2,400 on Britain (Fordyce, 2002). In addition well-nigh of the clubs in France have five courts and a clubhouse. Around 8000 of them were built and maintained by cities and local authori ties, each one costs 500,000. The idea of which would be a dream to the LTA and leave them with a substantially greater proportion of finance to invest in more for coaches, development programmes and competition structures (Jago, 2002)The culture of British tennis clubs may also be to blame. Tennis clubs in Britain mogul be a pleasant place for an adult to play a few sets on a Sunday afternoon but they do little to help the country produce future champions. The former performance director Patrice Hagelauer, stated The culture is one of leisure and social tennis which is great, if you also have junior tennis and competitive tennis, but at a lot of clubs, that is non there (Fordyce, 2002). However, the key to developing triple-crown players may not lie in the relatively expensive problems of increase the number of clubs, courts and coaches but may be more with how we deal with capableness talent and develop it.The LTA currently relies on talent selection, which is a process of differentiating between those young performers who are already in the sport in order to provide those with the greatest potential with opportunities for advanced level training, support and competition. However, there are a number of dis emoluments with this method. Initially it relies on juniors to be playing the game and it has been shown that we currently fall behind in this area. Also, individuals ordinarily compete with others in a similar age group and the most talented from that age group stand out. Selection of success at this young age may not be a direct indicator of potential due to the fact that it fails to recede into account the alter maturation levels evident in individuals of the same age that actually dictates there power and strength due to their greater size evidently providing an advantage to those who have had a faster maturity rate. This may go some way in explaining why those talented at that young age and are selected to be developed fail to continue th rough and go away and successful players on the senior circuit.It is obvious that this current method which the LTA employs doesnt seem to working very well. Our only both players in the top 100 have been described as an accident and a noncitizen (Roberts, 2002). Tim Henmans talent was tutored in a privately-run development scheme, and Greg Rusedski, was developed in the Canadian tennis system.Around the world other countries seem to have realised more efficient way of finding talented individuals. lots of the sporting success of Australia has been down to the realisation back in 1988 by the Australian Institute of Sport and particularly Dr Allan Hahn that it is no longer manageable to have a reliance on club systems to deliver talent at an elite level. He stated that to continue to be internationally competitive, we must actively seek to unearth the talent. Talent searches initially implemented in rowing spread to a wide mixing of sports, and following the announcement in 1994 of Australia to host the Sydney Olympics back in 2000 their in Federal Government allocated $500,000 a year for two years for national talent identification. The success of many Australian athletes at these games demonstrated the deduction of such a programme (AIS, 2003). Subsequently in 2002, the tennis precise talent search was implemented namely the Targeted Athlete Project (TAP). The program is individually designed to each player in the scheme to enlighten them a fail player. Each player is assessed upon joining TAP and areas of helplessness identified. Funds are then allocated to addressing these problems (Tennis Australia, 2003)This programme aims to support 30 of Australias best boys and 30 of there most talented girls. Current members of the programme range from the ages of 11 to the oldest, 22-year-old Evie Dominikovi. With this system in place, Australia, who currently causees the worlds number one in the male game, Lleyton Hewitt, will no mistrust create many mor e players of international calibre.The adoption of such a scheme may make considerable financial sense for the LTA. by the development of a screening process that identifies key multivariate constituents of a successful elite player more appropriate funding gutter be targeted at a keeped number of individuals who it is known that they possess the right psychological, physiological, skill/decision making and even sociological aptitudes inevitable for success. A system implemented in schools would not just limit the search to those who are currently active in tennis.This would eliminates both the players frustration of continued participation in a sport that they are not physiologically suited to and will prevent wasting funds on developing a talent that never had the potential to make it to the top, and then allowing the LTA to get the most out of its limited resources. Can we develop talent and increase participation poetry simultaneously?The LTA may have set itself an im possible task of increasing player numbers and developing better quality players with the current finances. In an attempt to achieve both finances are spread too thinly and neither is achieved successfully. It is evident that these two aims may not be as mutually supportive as the LTA consider them to be. Indeed it has long been stated the key to possessing high numbers of elite sports players from a nation is to have a broad found of participation and the broader the base the increase in likely hood and luck there is of finding quality players.There are several diminutive flaws in this assumption and there are anomalies in statistics that prove so. Figure 6 demonstrates the weak relationship between these two variables and an increase in players is by no means a necessary pre-requisite for developing tremendous numbers of elite performances. This is clearly highlighted in the case of Russia which has double the amount of tennis players Britain has in the top 100 yet has a 1/18th of the amount of total registered players (ETA 2000).Indeed although increasing the number of players may not have a direct effect on the number of elite players, the concentration of efforts in talent identification and development which will produce a greater number of elite players may have a combined effect in inspiring more players to take up the game increasing the sports national profile and subsequent theory of an increase in the sports allocation of financial helperance from national sources which would assist in broadening participation.