Buddy Up Tennis Internship: Summer Camp

These past couple of weeks have been a bit different in the Buddy Up Tennis world. Instead of the typical Saturday clinics and weekday office visits, I have been helping with the summer camps! Camp was held every morning for 2 weeks.

My experience with camp was quite interesting. Before camp, I had always served the role of Buddy. This means that I was always paired with an athlete and responsible for encouraging them as they went through clinic. However, during summer camps, I had the honor of being a coach! Being a coach has introduced me to another side of the organization that I have not seen before.

I must admit, I have a whole new appreciation for coaches. They have to be loud, confident and knowledgeable. Being a coach entails running all of the activity that happens on one court, with one group of athletes. I found that being a coach required a lot of trial and error. Some days, the drills that I ran would work perfectly and everything was great. However, other days this was not the case. On these days, I had to quickly adapt to the feedback that I was receiving from the athletes and the buddies. This required innovative thinking and keeping the primary motive at heart, helping these athletes with Down Syndrome learn how to play tennis.

I am so glad to have had this opportunity. Being a coach has allowed me to begin developing a whole new skill set that I had not been exposed to yet. It required being confident even when I may not have felt like it, delegating tasks to my assistant coaches in a kind manner and adapting to my environment within minutes. I cannot wait to see how those skills are further developed through my experiences with Buddy Up!