{"id":6115,"date":"2014-08-04T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T23:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/?p=6115"},"modified":"2014-08-04T09:00:47","modified_gmt":"2014-08-03T23:00:47","slug":"athlete-development-update-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/news\/2014\/08\/04\/athlete-development-update-4","title":{"rendered":"Athlete Development Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Todd Larkham<\/span><\/p>\n

ACT sport is proving that it’s not about the size of the population, but the quality of the training environment that matters. It’s the coaches and sporting bodies job to create these environments however the coach doesn’t produce champions \u2013 it’s up to the individual to do decide how hard they want to train and compete and how much they want to achieve.<\/p>\n

ACT’s Exum, Mills (Basketball)\u00a0 Flanagan (Hockey), Matthews (cycling), Buchanan (BMX)\u00a0 and of course our own Nick Kyrgios, just to name a few,\u00a0 have all shown recently that they can perform at the highest level of their chosen sport, on the international stage and they have proved champions can come from anywhere \u2013 be it a large or small city \u2013 and its the personal qualities of these athletes and their skills that determines their success.<\/p>\n

From my experience, the world class athletes in tennis all display similar qualities with the most important ones being a fierce determination to succeed, a great work ethic and intensity on court\u00a0 and an ability to compete under pressure.\u00a0 By competing, I mean consistently showing the guts, courage and composure required to play great tennis at the clutch moments.\u00a0 Sure you need to have great skills as well \u2013 it’s 50\/50 \u2013 skills and mental. But in order to obtain those skills, you first need the personal qualities and the willingness to put in the hard work plus the self belief to execute them under pressure.\u00a0\u00a0 Do you display these qualities and will you be the next ACT tennis player to shine?<\/p>\n

Here are the outstanding results of the past 2 months from ACT players:<\/p>\n

Nick Kyrgios
\n–\u00a0 Quarter-finalist Wimbledon
\n–\u00a0 Winner Nottingham Challenger<\/p>\n

Annerly Poulos
\n– Winner 14\/U Gold Wollongong
\n– Quarter-finalist 12\/U Rod Laver Brisbane<\/p>\n

Talllulah Farrow
\n–\u00a0 Winner 14\/U Silver Ipswich<\/p>\n

Luke Sarris
\n–\u00a0 Winner 14\/U Orange and Ulladulla Junior events<\/p>\n

Sanjana Bidarkal
\n-Semi-finals of the Nepean Open AMT<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Sanjana for gaining a full scholarship to the University of South Dakota in the US.\u00a0 This is a great outcome for Sanjana who has been part of ACT junior tennis since a young age and for many years part of Alun Jones and Damien Ward’s elite squad training environment. She has combined excellent tennis and education results to gain this opportunity. We wish her all the best and look forward to seeing her\u00a0 join in training when she visits her family back in Canberra over the next few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Todd Larkham ACT sport is proving that it’s not about the size of the population, but the quality of the training environment that matters. It’s the coaches and sporting bodies job to create these environments however the coach doesn’t produce champions \u2013 it’s up to the individual to do decide how hard they want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5910,"featured_media":6135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}