Today, we completed the third edition of the Laguna Blanca Tennis Camp in beautiful Santa Barbara and I’m proud to report a successful week. With 14 awesome campers, 5 celebrity players, 3 legendary coaches + yours truly, how could we go wrong?

In the team competition, Team Panda narrowly survived a late charge by Team Phix, giving Coach Tristan his team’s first win at Laguna Tennis Camp! Individual awards were handed out to Henry Signa (Most Improved), Alessa Somer (Coaches’ Award), and Grace Fuss/Luke Williams (Co-MVP’s).

Over the last five days we’ve prepared campers to make the jump from junior tennis to the high school format and learned some other important lessons, too:

We decided that Kan Jam may be the new classic frisbee game.

We learned that team introductions and cheers are the first chance to get an edge in every high school match!

We showed our focus and determination…

And we discovered that listening carefully and pitching in to help out are qualities that high school coaches appreciate greatly!

We found out that when you commit yourself to playing for a good team, the friendships and love for tennis don’t end with high school…DJ Conrad provided some tunes and showed his progress in the two years since he played for the Owls at Laguna!

We learned how to get up for the high ball…

And, of course, how to get along with our feathered friends!

It’s been my pleasure over the last three years to run this tennis program and I hope that the lessons our campers learned will carry them through to successful high school careers. It’s time for a well-deserved break now, but I am already thinking about ways to make 2017 the best camp yet!

– Coach Trevor