Talent Spotting Tests with Kids?

[Coolio]

Besides seeing a kid move and play a match or groundstrokes. Wondering what sort of tests are out there that give you a good sense of kids having ability or potential (good grasp of physical skills and co-ordination) at a particular age?

Idea came to me as I was coaching a group the other week and a new kid aged 10 joined, he was able to understand and play topspin on forehand in 1 lesson and his athletic skills in movement really impressed me in a warm up drill we did, even though he was way behind the other's I could see him surpassing them quickly with practice.

From doing a lot of grassroots tennis over the Summer with kids that never played before, a couple of things stood out to me.

Age group 5-8.
1) Self rally with forehands, backhands, then forehand and backhand volleys in the air alternating each time. If they can do this for 10 volleys in a row, they are pretty good.

2) Throwing a ball from the baseline over the net and even over the service line on the other side of the net.

Any other ideas guys?

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[Coolio]

For movement. Spider drills of various types.

Nice one, I have a USTA book with times for older performance juniors but nothing for younger kids. This is the spider with 5 balls in corners and you bring them back to racquet in the middle of the baseline.
From a little reading of past threads here, some targets look like 25secs for 5 year old, 23.5 for 7 year old, 22 for a 9 year old.

 

[Ash_Smith]

For physical literacy there are many generic "tests" that will give you a baseline of a childs athletic development. Tennis specific testing does not measure a childs potential or possible aptitude for tennis, it measures how much exposure to tennis they may have already had.

Personally I would "recruit" based on physical literacy and character rather than early technical skill.

For reference LTA "Talent" tests include:

Physical:
20m sprint
Agility cone test
Hexagon jumps
Standing ball throw
Reactive agility test (light gates)
Star/Fan drill
Standing Jump

Tennis Specific:
Serve - 20 serves (10 deuce/10 ad) all serves aimed towards backhand half of the box
Rally - 1 minute cross court - number in and rising balls
Lateral agility - 4 balls alternate forehands/backhands at a pre-determined frequency x 5 repetitions. if a player completes 12 balls the frequency of feed increases on the next round. Repeat until the player can no longer achieve 12 balls at the given frequency.

 

[dominikk1985]

for Hand eye coordination you can do things like Dribbling with two Tennis balls or catching a dropped Tennis ball before it bounces (you hold a ball waist high and the Student puts his Hand on yours, then you drop it without him knowing when and he has to catch it).

 

[onehandbh]

What would be some good times/distances for the tests you listed? at various ages? for an adult?

For reference LTA "Talent" tests include:

Physical:
20m sprint
Agility cone test
Hexagon jumps
Standing ball throw
Reactive agility test (light gates)
Star/Fan drill
Standing Jump

 

[Ash_Smith]

^^^ We have norm tables for kids of different ages in the UK, based on 7000 kids being tested between 2007 and 2011.

Examples
20m sprint - Boys 9u avg 4.19s Girls 9u 4.26s
20m sprint - Boys 10u avg 4.11s Girls 10u 4.09s

Ball throw - Boys 9u avg 22.71m Girls 17.74m
Ball throw - Boys 10u avg 24.6m Girls 21.27

Star drill - Boys 9u avg 20.32s Girls 9u 20.66s
Star drill - Boys 10u avg 19.63s Girls 10u 19.95s

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[sureshs]

Serve - 20 serves (10 deuce/10 ad) all serves aimed towards backhand half of the box

What is the reason for the backhand target area?

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[sureshs]

What is the weaker side for the majority of players?

If you look at it that way, yes. But I was thinking difficulty of serve. For me, from ad court, going to flat or TS to backhand side is easier than slicing DTL, and from deuce court, slicing out wide to forehand side is more difficult.

Wait a minute. We might both be mistaken. Did Ash mean backhand of returner or server (assuming he meant right-handed)?

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[Ash_Smith]

^^^ serve to returners backhand side - wide serve from ad side requires good technical skills (internal rotation, pronation etc), so it helps show which kids can maintain technique and which resort to "pancaking" just to make the target (our kids are rated 1-7 against a technical model along with the "test" result).

That's how we designed it, but again, there is no right/wrong way to "test" as long as the "test" is delivered consistently and the criteria are clearly defined - whether you just look at results or whether you have a coach analysis alongside is dependent on what you are looking for. You could just as easily make it wide serves only, or 'T' serves only.

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[sureshs]

^^^ serve to returners backhand side - wide serve from ad side requires good technical skills (internal rotation, pronation etc)

Don't agree. From ad court, for a rightie, serving to rightie returner's backhand falls into the natural serve motion of hitting up and out, while hitting it down the center requires special skills. See the junior guy's thread right now about why he finds slicing more difficult. Going down the center with slice (and doing it correctly, i.e., not floating a slice) requires some amount of body push towards the target, and you can see that clearly in Federer's serve - he almost seems to "push" a little forward to get his serve at the T.

 

[Ash_Smith]

^^^Okay, you don't have to agree. Your talent tests can be different As long as you know what you are looking for for the players you select into your programme.

 

[sureshs]

What is the purpose of talent spotting? To put better kids in more advanced training sessions?

 

[Ash_Smith]

^^^ Not sure what purpose @Coolio was enquiring for, but it could be. NGB's tend to do it for selection into County/Regional/National programmes, for matrix funding purposes etc.

It also depends on whether you are doing "Talent Identification" or "Talent Selection". Much of what sports refer to as "ID" is actually "Selection" - that is they run a series of "tests" in the chosen sport to see whom currently has the most aptitude for it and then select based on that. True "Talent Identification" is much harder as it requires identifying the underlying skill set which could allow someone to become highly skilled at a given task - probably with out them ever having done it. In CGS sports it is easier - if your limb length to torso ratio is good (i.e long arms and legs), you are tall and your aerobic capacity is good you will probably make a very good elite rower. In tennis it is much harder - hence why I would rather look at Character and physical literacy than tennis specific tests - the more specific the test the more you are selecting over identifying.

 

[sureshs]

But if you had applied the character test to JMac, Safin or Krygios, it would not have worked, right? And from what I have read, not to teenage Federer either.

 

[Ash_Smith]

^^^ Depends what characteristics you are looking for - what sits behind a great tennis player (or any elite athlete for that matter)? Psychologically speaking a great number of elite athletes would be classifiable as high-functioning psychopaths in many psychometric tests!

Resilience, determination, perfection-complex, drive, ambition, creativity, single-mindedness - I can see all the players you name would have those in spades.

 

[sureshs]

I think Safin lacked determination. He just used to give up against Federer.

And Federer was not impressive in the determination area against Nadal.

Though of course we are talking about very very high levels here.

 

[Ash_Smith]

^^^ I think picking on one specific example for a particular individual is perhaps not the basis for a fair assessment of a persons character.

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[shindemac]

You will see this periodically over your career. Some kids jump out from day 1, they just are able to improve faster than other kids.

We have a girl who did gymnastics almost obsessively until age 9, then switched to tennis. Now 11, she has blown past most of the other kids who have played since age 5-6. From day 1 her athletic ability and quick learning has been impressive.

Not all the other parents are digging this phenomenon though!

From eyeballing it, i think the average is 17s for players on here in 4.5. And an extra 2s for every level below that, but it is verrrry rough estimate since there is not much datas. You can comb through all the posts on this forum if you want to be precise, but that is what i have seen over the years. Obviously, there are speedy players who are much faster than average. My best time is 14 or 15s (check the archives), and now I can do 17 or 18s.

Yes, I believe basic athletic ability is very important. Balance is one of the most under-rated that I have seen on here. Most people think if they aren't falling over, then what's the big deal. I know balance is really important, but i would imagine a gymnast would be deficient in certain areas still. You hear about or prolly seen the multi-sport athletes from baseball/football/soccer/etc who come into tennis and pick it up pretty easily, but this is certainly interesting! For concreteness, i played a lot of bball, so i attribute most of my speed, agility, footwork to that. But i didn't do any throwing sports, so learning the serve has been very, very slow process for me. I also do a lot of balance training, but I'm no Aly Raisman.

I agree w the cross-over between different sports. For concreteness, I was playing a friend in ping-pong a few years ago. We started hitting together more and more, so i got used to reading his spin serves whereas before it was impossible for me. If you didn't read it correctly, the ball would basically fly off your paddle 45 degrees to the right or left depending on which side spin he put on it, so you really didn't even have time to think about it. I stopped playing for a couple years, but today I was hitting w a 1500 level player, and he was showing me his serves. He used a different grip, and had underspin and topspin serves as disguises that were hard to read. But somehow, I was able to pick up on it pretty fast within less than 10 tries, so my previous skill transferred to this (which even surprised me). Then I thought about using this skill more, and even reading the direction he was going to serve (which worked!). Then i had another lightbulb moment, and asked if the good players use this all the time for all the strokes. Finally to come full circle, I will try this next time I am out on the tennis court and see if this transfers over, but this is very hard to do since i need to focus and I am not used to doing this.

Anyways, I consider this my advanced tip for the year lol. I always try to apply concepts from different sport to other sports. Like applying the kinetic chain from tennis to ping-pong, which i tried and it also worked. I tried to explain it to him, but he didn't listen to me since i suck at ping-pong.

 

[Coolio]

^^^ We have norm tables for kids of different ages in the UK, based on 7000 kids being tested between 2007 and 2011.

Examples
20m sprint - Boys 9u avg 4.19s Girls 9u 4.26s
20m sprint - Boys 10u avg 4.11s Girls 10u 4.09s

Ball throw - Boys 9u avg 22.71m Girls 17.74m
Ball throw - Boys 10u avg 24.6m Girls 21.27

Star drill - Boys 9u avg 20.32s Girls 9u 20.66s
Star drill - Boys 10u avg 19.63s Girls 10u 19.95s

Do you have a link or know where I get find these norm tables please @Ash_Smith?

 

[spun_out]

Yes, those are good reference points for kids that age. The very fast kids at 9-11 will start posting times in the 17-19 range. The same girl who had crazy far throwing distance measurements at age 8 put in a 16.7 at age 9 in spider drills, great athlete.

Which variation of the drill do you use for these times? The videos you linked show shuffling and backstepping. Do you make the kids do this or just anything goes? Do you make them put the ball on the racquet?

And for throwing, is this with a tennis ball or something else?

 

[Ash_Smith]

Do you have a link or know where I get find these norm tables please @Ash_Smith?

I don't believe they are in the public domain

 

[TCF]

content not found

 

[spun_out]

Spider drill in regards to those times is 5 balls, one at each baseline/singles line intersect, one each at service line/singles line intersect, fifth ball on the T. Racquet set down on the baseline hash mark, with the handle towards the back fence. Kids start next to the racquet at the hash mark and gather balls one at a time, bring each ball back and it must stay on the racquet...so they must bend and place it, not drop it.

They can move however they want to, shuffle, sprint, crossover...whatever works in their minds. Most move in a counter clockwise fashion, grabbing the ball at the baseline/baseline intersect first, then around to each ball, last ball gathered being the opposite baseline/singles line intersect.

The throws are with a tennis ball. Start touching back fence, run to baseline and launch ball before crossing baseline.

TCF, thanks for this info. I will try these out.