{"id":29547,"date":"2023-01-27T09:11:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T22:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/?p=29547"},"modified":"2023-01-27T09:46:33","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T22:46:33","slug":"vicsattheao-women-and-girls-day-anna-gorski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/news\/2023\/01\/27\/vicsattheao-women-and-girls-day-anna-gorski","title":{"rendered":"#VicsAtTheAO &#8211; Women and Girls Day: Anna Gorski"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">Anna Gorksi is the Head Coach of Smash Tennis Australia. Anna offers a wide range of tennis coaching programs for both kids and adults operating out of Williams Landing Tennis Club. The programs range from Hot Shots programs to Elite Young Guns Squads, Cardio Tennis, Ladies Social Mornings, Adult Group Lessons and more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">As a female coach in a predominantly male dominated environment, Anna uses her wealth of knowledge and experiences over the past 15 years to provide a fun and inclusive atmosphere for all. <\/span><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">Watching the Australian Open when Anna was in Russia as a young girl sparked her interest in tennis. Seeing Steffi Graff and Monica Sellers inspired her to pick up the racquet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWatching the Australian Open in the freezing cold in Russia to now calling Melbourne my home \u2013 I wouldn\u2019t have dreamt it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI started playing tennis where Marat Saffin started playing and met a few people on tour and sort of fell into coaching.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">After moving to Melbourne in her early twenties, Anna moved to Dubai for 10 years where she was a sports teacher and tennis coach. Since moving back to Melbourne, Anna started Smash Tennis Australia.<br \/>\n\u201cTennis has given me passion, it\u2019s given me purpose.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cInfluencing young kids and making them feel that passion for the sport, because it is a wonderful sport. Watching them grow and develop and hearing from parents saying since taking up coaching, their school grades have gone up, their concentration levels are going up and that makes it all worthwhile.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIt shows that we are actually influencing them beyond the court even if they aren\u2019t planning on making it in a professional environment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWatching everything come together is what it\u2019s all about. Today, watching the Kids on Court, majority of them I have coached them since they were three or four and didn\u2019t know how to hold a racquet and now they\u2019re having rallies and they\u2019re enjoying it and they\u2019re getting quite serious about it, it\u2019s fantastic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">For Women and Girls Day, female coaches and their female players were invited on court. Today, Anna was one of the female coaches that brought her Kids on Court today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">Being a female coach in a predominantly male environment has had its hardships but seeing the change over the last decade has been inspiring.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cBack in the day, being a professional female coach was almost unheard of. When Emily Marasmo became a coach for Andy Murray, there was a shift in everyone\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cSeeing female coaches increase over the years is definitely great, as it used to be very male dominated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">Anna is thankful for the support female coaches have gotten in Australia over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe support of Tennis Australia in terms of the female coaching, the network, the workshops that we get, its phenomenal. I think without that, I don\u2019t think most of us would be able to be in our position.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIt is hard sometimes going up against male coaches, now things have definitely changed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"ui-provider vr b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ab ac ae af ag ah ai aj ak\" dir=\"ltr\">Seeing the number of female coaches coming through is amazing. We would love to have more younger girls coming in and taking it up but it is definitely moving in the right direction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>#VicsAtTheAO<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-standard-landscape wp-image-29551\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/files\/2023\/01\/327384185_842310930203389_4259439183673738487_n-700x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/files\/2023\/01\/327384185_842310930203389_4259439183673738487_n-700x450.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/files\/2023\/01\/327384185_842310930203389_4259439183673738487_n-360x230.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/files\/2023\/01\/327384185_842310930203389_4259439183673738487_n-200x128.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anna Gorksi is the Head Coach of Smash Tennis Australia. Anna offers a wide range of tennis coaching programs for both kids and adults operating out of Williams Landing Tennis Club. The programs range from Hot Shots programs to Elite Young Guns Squads, Cardio Tennis, Ladies Social Mornings, Adult Group Lessons and more. As a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6366,"featured_media":29548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}