Avatea students test tennis skills

Junior tennis development is in full swing and today Avatea Primary School students will be putting their tennis skills to the test in the schools inter-house tennis tournament at the tennis centre in Nikao.

For the past five weeks, local tennis coach Malcolm Kajer has been coaching Avatea school kids as part of the ANZ tennis in school programme.

Todays inter-house tennis tournament will include a mini-tennis competition which is played on a half court configuration and a separate prisoners tennis tournament.

The prisoners competition is based on the tennis development game that helps budding tennis stars improve hand-eye coordination and to better understand the game of tennis.

Parents of Avatea kids involved in todays tournament are encouraged to head along to the tennis courts and support all the kids.

The competition will start at 10am and wrap up at noon.

Kajer also plans to introduce tennis to all the other school kids on the island throughout the course of the year.

This year, Kajer hopes to encourage schools to take their kids to the tennis centre in Nikao for lessons as the international standard court is a fantastic facility for kids to really spread out learn tennis and enjoy it.

Meanwhile, weekly junior tennis programmes will kick into action this Saturday.

At 9am, Kajer will be introducing tennis to kids aged 4 to 7-years and parents are encouraged to take your kids along to the tennis centre for the fun tennis lessons.

At 10am the popular ANZ stars competition starts for beginner tennis players and will run for five weeks.

Again parents are encouraged to get your kids involved in this development programme and tournament.

Parents who are keen to get their kids involved in tennis can contact Malcolm Kajer on 75614 for more information.

Kajer would like to thank ANZ Bank for their continued support of tennis development in the Cook Islands via the weekly kids tennis tournament and the ANZ tennis in schools programme.