Welcome to RacketeersTennis
A fun and exciting way for children to learn how to play Tennis.
Available to primary schools for:
- Curriculum PE Lessons
- PPA Cover
- Breakfast & Lunchtime Activity Clubs
- After School Sports Clubs
- Kids Birthday Sports Parties
- Holidays Sports Camps & Playschemes
- Bespoke Services for schools
- CPD Staff Training
- Parents & Children Bonding/Learning Events
- Please email us for a full list of services and programs we offer to schools
Watch This Video:
Watch children taking part in our RacketeersTennis school sports program. Please email us for more information and a quote.
Welcome to our RacketeersTennis School Sports Program
Hello Head Teachers and PE Leads.
Similar to all of our school sports programs, our RacketeersTennis sports program also aims to give children a “WOW, that was an amazing experience, can we do it again?“.
To book a RacketeersTennis sports program for your school please email us for a quote. If you are a parent and want to book a multi-sports or mini-Olympics birthday party for your child then visit our Kids Sports Parties page, or if you want to find out more about our school holiday sports camps click here.
What is RacketeersTennis?
RacketeersTennis is tennis lessons for primary schools and is a Sporting Dreams School Sports Program. A fun and exciting way for children from EYRS to Year 6 to learn how to play Tennis.
What to Expect?
Our expert instructor will come into your school with all the rackets, nets, tennis balls and also foam tennis balls for any indoor lessons. Children will enjoy taking part in age appropriate fun tennis games, activities and competitions and we structure and organise the lessons to allow children lots of opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding on how to play tennis.
Our target is for each child to drop, swing, hit and catch a tennis ball 200 to 300 times in the space of 30minutes. This allows children to do some speedy learning and to develop the key motor skills including coordination, balance, timing, throwing, catching and hitting a ball with a racket.
What Skills do the Children Develop?
Children will play fun orientated games whilst learning and developing the following tennis skills:
- Throwing and catching skills
- How to bowl / throw / hit underarm and overarm with and without a racket
- How to score points
- How to serve underarm for KS1 & KS2, and also how to serve overarm for KS2
- How to hit various shots (Depending on their age and ability). Children will learn;
-Forehand shot (KS1 & KS2)
-Backhand shot (KS1 & KS2)
-Drop shot (KS1 & KS2)
-Lob shot (KS2)
-Volley return (KS2)
-Half volley return (KS2)
KS1 in general play fun orientated games in which they subconsciously develop their skills, whereas KS2 (usually Year 5 & 6) can start to think consciously about their actions and techniques to enable them to complete a skill.
Additional Benefits:
Children develop many transferable skills such as:
- Balance
- Coordination
- Developing & Improving Reaction Times
- Developing Strength
- Improving Self-Esteem & Confidence
- Developing Team Work and Cooperation
- Learning to be a good sports person and winning with dignity
Our approach to teaching children:
Take a look at our history and about us page and you will read a little about our coaching methodology, our approach and our use of discipline. These are vitally important to create and maintain a fun, safe and efficient learning environment for the children.
Our instructors approach to teaching all activities is firm but fair and in a fun way. We always say to the children that ‘we want you to have an amazing time but if you have poor listening skills then you will have a poor lesson, but if you have amazing listening skills then you will have an amazing lesson’.
Like all of our school sports programs, we try our very best to get the balance right between making lessons fun whilst maintaining good child behaviour management.
What services do you offer to schools?
Bookings are available to schools for PE Lessons, PPA Cover, After School Clubs, and School Holiday Sports Camps, plus other bespoke services including Birthday Parties and for Community Groups. For a full list of services and programs we offer to schools please email us.
Photo Gallery:
Sporting Dreams was formed in 1999 by Managing Director Darren Hill. We provide both organised activities and fun specialist sports coaching services to primary schools, children and community groups throughout the UK.
We are based in the Midlands but deliver our services to schools throughout the UK. We have a small team of experienced sports coaches and dance instructors across the UK with a degree level education in sports coaching and sports science. We provide primary schools with Specialist Sports Coaching services during PE Lessons, After School Clubs and a number of bespoke services to support schools curriculums.
During the school holidays we organise Fun Sports Activity Camps for schools and communities and at the same time provide work experience, training programs and part time work for school leavers and sports activity leaders. We also provide school staff CPD team building events and children’s sports & dance birthday parties.
Take a look at our full list of services for primary schools below.
– Breakfast Activity Clubs –
– After School & Lunchtime Clubs –
– Reward / Taster Days –
– PE Lessons –
– PPA Cover –
– Holiday Sports Camps –
– Healthy Sports Days/Weeks –
– CPD Staff Training and Team Building Events –
– Parents & Children Bonding/Learning Events –
– School Leavers / Work Experience Opportunities –
– Employers of: fully qualified and trainee sports coaches, activity sports leaders….
dance, gymnastics, martial arts and fitness instructors –
We provide schools with expert coaches in the main stream sports and also in a number of unique activities such as Quidditch, Fencing, New Age Kurling, Mini Archery, Cricket, Glow in the Dark Dodgeball and many more. To view the full list of sports we offer, visit Our Sports/Activities page.
We’d like to think that our vast expertise in sports coaching and education, helps us to design new games and activities which will engage children 100% throughout their lessons.
Primary Schools
Here are the logo’s of a few of our most popular School Sports Coaching Programs.
Click on the links below to take a closer look at what’s involved or for a full list of all the programs, take a look at the Sports & Activities page.
Our use of discipline:
Discipline is massively important to the quality of any lesson. Obviously we all want children to enjoy themselves but if children can’t listen then they won’t learn and it reduces the quality of any lesson. We all have different approaches when it comes to maintaining a good standard of behaviour but we encourage all our staff to start strict and to ease off once children start to build a bond with staff and understand how we expect them to behave. Here are some of the behaviour management strategies we use;
Time outs
Lessons are built up from the start with our instructor explaining to the children that poor listening skills will result in a poor lesson, but amazing listening skills will result in an amazing fun lesson. Our instructor will then play a few brain activation games to get children brains thinking and processing the information and reacting to instructions quickly which means we can do more fun games in the time allocated. Once children understand what to expect in terms of behaviour and basic communication
Children will play fun games while learning many transferable skills and improving their balance, reactions, and eye to hand coordination and general motor skills. These transferable skills includeo
Our Approach:
We use sports and fun orientated games and activities as tools to help develop many transferable skills such as Balance, Spatial Awareness, Eye-Hand Coordination, Improving Reaction Time as well as Sport Specific Skills Coaching.
All lessons work on installing children’s Confidence and Self-esteem as well as Social Interaction, Teamwork and Cooperation. We attempt to create lessons which are 100% engaging and which allow children to have loads of attempts at learning an action of a skill in quick succession, which in turn helps children to quickly develop and finely tune their actions and technique to complete a skill.
Our coaching methodology:
In all of our sports coaching programs we design them around fun and engagement using a whole-part-whole coaching formula to help children learn new skills.
We take children through their learning process of acquiring and developing the knowledge, skills and understanding of how to play the sport, then we coach them how to select and apply their skills during competitive situations in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 etc, building up to 7v7 games.
Depending on the sport or activity, and after an initial demonstration, we also find that a 10-15 minute element of a guided self-discovery approach helps children to release their initial pent up excitement. We then drift into the whole-part-whole coaching approach to gradually build up their knowledge, skills and understanding of the sport, skill, techniques and rules.
Lesson Plan & Structure:
In general PE lessons where we coach mainstream sports, we follow a simple lesson plan which include:
- Warm up using a fun game (5mins)
- Learn a skill in a non-competitive environment (5-10min)
- Apply the skill to a competitive situation during a fun game (5-10min)
- Small sided competitions and games including 1v1, 2v1, 3v1, no bigger than 7v7 team games (10-15min)
- Lesson summary (2min)
For each section of the lesson our instructor will go through the learning process with the children which include:
- Set up the game
- Explain the game
- Demonstrate the game
- Check everyone understands and maybe repeat
- Play the game
- Apply coaching advice to individual children to improve their skills
Communication & Behaviour:
Communication skills and positive behaviour are highly important to the success of our lessons. The follow section only takes our instructors 2 minutes to embed into their lesson and may be obvious to many people, but it does form the foundations of our coaching methodology. If children can’t listen or behave positively then we can’t teach them to the standard we would like to. The following exercises are altered slightly for the different year groups, but they do allow children’s minds, bodies and attitudes, to get ready to take part in our lessons.
Preparation: At the start of each lesson instructors explain how they expect children to behaviour and how to listen. We explain the importance of not to talk when their instructor is talking. For children in Key Stage 2, we encourage staff to explain basic communication skills of a sender, receiver and the breakdown of communication skills and that accidents might happen with interference when another person is talking when their instructors is talking, as this leads to distractions and children missing out on safety issues and instructions. Vitally important if you are participating in a sport like fencing or mini archery.
Procedures we Use to create and maintain a fun and safe learning environment:
The following procedures and exercises are used by our instructors to create clear expectations on positive behaviour and to help children to understand the importance of clear communication and excellent listening skills.
1. Preparation Video: Before the first lesson, children sometimes watch a 2 minute video of the sport, activity or games that they will play during the program. We use this to set expectations, create excitement, and to assist managing children’s behaviour throughout the program.
2. Staff Introduction: Our staff member will then introduce themselves and explain a few of the rules that children must follow. For example; “Hello children. My name is Peter and I’m going to be your coach/instructor.”
3. How to listen: Our instructor will then say, “I want you to have an amazing time today but when I’m talking, are you meant to be talking? or listening?”
4. How to check children are paying attention: Our instructor will then say, “During the lesson you will be excited but I’ll be checking if you are listening and I’ll use a few strategies, such as, (then our instructor will ask the children to do the following) stand up if your are listening, sit down if you are listening, hand on your head if you are listening, this way I can see if your are listening.” We also use the clap strategy used in many schools.
5. Creating a fast lesson flow and quick reactions to instructions: If children take a long time to follow simple instructions it can spoil the lesson flow, content and consequently most importantly the fun. That’s why our instructor at the start of the lesson will get children’s brains warmed up and ready to process instructions by playing a few fun brain activation games and exercises. Simple but effective.
Brain Activation Exercises: Our instructor will say, “When I give you instructions I need your brain to be working fast and react quickly to my instructions. Turn on your brains and lets see who has the fastest thinking brain. The first person to answer wins.” Examples:
KS1: What is? 1+1? 5+5? 10-2?
KS2: What is? 10×10? 100-3? 51-3?
Motor Response & Reaction Exercises: These help to get children’s bodies ready to move quickly to instructions. We don’t want children to take 10 minutes to stand on a line, and in our experience these exercises help initiate a fast flowing lesson. Our instructor will say, “Everyone say the word reactions, lets see who has the fastest reactions. First person to react wins.”
First person to: Clap
First person to: Jump into the air
First person to: Sit down
6. Amazing listening: We always say to the children; “Listening skills are very important. If you talk when your instructor is talking then you might miss out on the safety information and you might hurt or be hurt. If you have poor listening skills then you’ll have a poor lesson, but if you have amazing listening skills then you’ll have an amazing fun lesson.“
Set up in 1999. Originally called Soccer Dreams, Darren decided to set up his own professional football coaching business after finishing his Degree in Sports Coaching and Leisure Management at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, and after gaining experience working for professional footballs clubs including Chelsea, Wycombe Wanderers and Leicester City.
In 2000 Darren won a Princes Youth Business Trust Award of £2000 to support his after school football coaching business start up.
- In 2002 the main business name was changed to Sporting Dreams to reflect the development of the services and variety of sports we offered. We now have numerous sports coaching and dance programs for primary schools which all come under the umbrella of Sporting Dreams. These include fitFENCE, Kidditch, KurlingKids, RobinArrows, DancingDreams, SoccerDreams, SportsCamps, SportsParty, GlowDodgeball, RacketeersTennis and WicketCricket. We are constantly looking at new ways/ideas/programs to introduce children to new sports and activities. Take a look at our full list of programs here.
Darren Hill – Sporting Dreams Managing Director
Contact us at [email protected]
History Timeline - Short Story
The aim of this section is to show you the journey of Sporting Dreams since 1999 and how our services have evolved. Darren and his staff have worked extremely hard over the years, and this section will give parents, head teachers and PE Coordinators our background information. Click on the image carousel below to view fully and to read some of the press reviews.
Here’s an insight into the education of Darren Hill (Managing director of Sporting Dreams) of which the organisation’s foundations are built on and to demonstrate similar educational backgrounds of our staff.
- BTEC First Diplama in Sports Studies 1 year course at Hinckley College.
- BTEC National Diploma in Leisure Studies 2 year course at Hinckley College.
- HND in Sports Studies 2 year course at Buckingham Chilterns University College, High Wycombe.
- BA HONS Degree in Leisure Management with application to sports 2 year course at Buckingham Chilterns University College, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
- FA Coaching Certificate / UEFA b with BERKS & BUCKS FA, then went on to coach for Wycombe Wanderers FC, Chelsea FC and Leicester City FC football in the Community Scheme during after school clubs and holiday professional football coaching courses.
- Various Level 1, 2, 3 National Governing Bodies (NGB) coaching certificates.
September 1999. Soccer Dreams was set up as a part time after school football coaching skills business by Darren Hill. Darren worked part time in the evenings at ASDA whilst in the daytime did free coaching in schools. Click on the image to view Newspaper article from Abbey Infants in Nuneaton.
October 1999. Here’s a newspaper report from the Hinckley Independent and our first SOCCER DREAMS professional football coaching course during the October half term. Organised on the local council playing fields Britannia Road in Burbage, Leicestershire. 80 children attended the course.
Darren’s University colleagues brought their professional experience from working for Tottenham, QPR and West Brom.
October 1999. Team photos of children who attended the 2day professional football coaching course.
October 1999 to July 2004. Here’s a photo of Darren Hill with the Westfield Junior School in Hinckley who took part in the Soccer Dreams Free In-school Coaching Program. 15 Schools throughout the Hinckley area were offered free football coaching during their PE lessons. See the photo’s below of St Peter’s Primary School, Earl Shilton. Westfield Junior School, Holliers Walk Primary School, Thurlaston Primary School, Old Mill Primary School, Ullesthorpe Primary School, Claybrooke Magna Primary School, Weavers Close Primary School.
September 2002. Soccer Dreams started to run after school clubs at various schools throughout Hinckley, Nuneaton, Coventry, Kenilworth, Leamington Spa, Leicester City, Derby and Nottingham. Here’s a photo of the Monday Soccer Dreams after school football skills with Head Coach Darren Hill at Lutterworth High School 5.15pm-6.15pm. 4-12years.
July 2000 to July 2011. Soccer Dreams After School football skills coaching at Burbage Infants School in Leicestershire. Coaches Liam, Tom and Stuart with their classes. One of our longest running clubs.
September 2005. Soccer Dreams Coach Edward Fincham and children in a Newspaper clipping from the Hinckley Times. A Half Term Professional Football Coaching Course for children.
September 2003: The business trading name was changed to Sporting Dreams to reflect the change in the services we offered to schools.
September 2004. Sporting Dreams first staff photo and new logo.
September 2006. The Soccer Dreams program was still going strong with coach Nathan Winder and his after school football skills at Thomas Estley Community College, Broughton Astley.
July 2007. Soccer Dreams teamed up with Ex-Professional Leicester City Legends Matt Elliott and Gerry Taggart to organise their first Soccer School for children which held at Hinckley United FC. Click on the image to view Newspaper article.
2007: We introduced a new Dance program for primary schools called Dancing Dreams. We recruited IDTA and degree level professional dance teachers and offered schools fun alternative dance lessons for PE lessons and after school clubs. Here’s one of our dance teacher’s (Jo) at Old Mill Primary School in Broughton Astley.
2005 -2009: Expansion time: Sporting Dreams started to offer sports coaching services to schools throughout the Midlands. Here’s a view of our first information booklet.
2004 -2007: Soccer Dreams Juniors Football Club was set up and ran on Saturdays and Sundays by coaches and parents. During the Soccer Dreams after school coaching lessons, coaches came across a number of talented youngsters who were not involved with any teams. We decided to set up a voluntary football club and ran it as Soccer Dreams Juniors FC.
The under8’s and 9’s came runners up in their 1st year and won the league in their 2nd year. The club was then taken on solely by parent’s and moved to Lutterworth Town Juniors FC.
Image: Darren with his under 8’s and 9’s teams.
2005-Present Day:
PPA Cover Service for schools. With schools having to give their teacher 10% of their time to plan, prepare and assess their children’s work (PPA), Sporting Dreams offered schools an affordable solution for PPA Cover. This created a boom in our business and we recruited more full time staff, including Alex Lane in this photo at Spinney Hill Primary School in Leicester.
2008-2018: Adult 6 A Side football leagues.
Sporting Dreams formed a partnership with Hinckley United Football Club and started to organise a adult 6 a side football league. We have previously worked with the club and used their facilities to run our School Holiday Sports Camps.
When the club had a 3G astro-turf built, Sporting Dreams took on the role of organising a adult 6 a side football league every Wednesday. We did this successfully for the next 10years but unfortunately the club had some internal issues which contributed to reduced interest in using their facility.
Our main business remains PE coaching, but the 6 a side created finance to help support families on low income by giving away free places to children on our holiday camps.
2014: Here’s a copy of the summer 2014 playscheme flyer.
2015: Here’s a copy of the summer 2015 playscheme flyer we offered to schools throughout the Midlands.
2016: Newspaper article about the Easter holiday playscheme.
2016: Another fun playscheme for the children at The Cannons CE Primary School, Bedworth. .
2011-Present Day:
Robin Arrows Mini Archery Schools Program. We introduced a fun new Mini Archery program for schools during their PE lessons and after school clubs. Teaching children the basics of mini archery. For more info visit www.robinarrows.info
2013-Present Day: fitFENCE. Mini fencing program for schools. Sporting Dreams invested in a fun new sport program of Olympic fencing. Giving children and teachers a fun introduction to the skills of fencing. For more info visit www.fitfence.com
2014: Playscheme. a Newspaper clip from the Sporting Dreams school holiday sports camp.
2017: Sporting Dreams introduced a New Age Kurling program for schools called Kurlingkids. For more info visit www.kurlingkids.com
2018: Sporting Dreams introduced a New Sport program for schools called KIDDITCH. Quidditch for Kids. For more information visit www.kidditch.info
2020: Sporting Dreams introduced a New Sport program for schools called Glowdodgeball. Glow in the Dark Dodgeball for Schools PE lessons and children’s Birthday Parties. For more information visit www.glowdodgeball.com
2022: Our new Sporting Dreams sports characters. We had theses characters designed to reflect the various schools we work in and the various ethnicities we aim to inspire to play sports and get involved in healthy exercise.
2022:
School Sports Logo:
Our new Sporting Dreams School Sports Logo with our Mascot Tommy the Tiger. For more information please visit our School Sports PE Programs page.
2022:
Sports Camp Logo:
Our new Sporting Dreams Sports Camp Logo with our Mascot Tommy the Tiger. For more information please visit our Sports Camp Page.
mission
To engage, inspire and develop children’s experiences in fun sports and healthy exercise.
vision
To work with every primary school throughout the UK delivering each sports coaching program we offer, and to provider fun sports camps to children every school holiday.
values
- Reliable
- Honest
- Hard Working