It was an unusual summer in almost every way. But, despite the pandemic, 71 San Francisco youth were able to experience some normalcy (and good healthy fun!) by participating in a summer tennis camp run by SF Rec & Park. Thanks to Lou Maunupau, Tennis Programs Coordinator, for this summer recap.
2020 Tennis-Art-Chess-Vocabulary Camp
The Tennis-Art-Chess-Vocabulary camp at Joe DiMaggio Playground was extremely successful. We had three consecutive three-week sessions, nine weeks total.
With full enrollment, 71 campers were registered and 103 waitlisted. Due to Department of Public Health protocols we were allotted two pods of 12 juniors each – a younger pod, aged 5-8, and an older pod, aged 9-13.
We have been updating our mission statement to employ philosophical tenets of Plato and his vision of the scholar athlete. Not a high-performance tennis camp, it treats each child holistically with an emphasis on tennis technique, fair play (“sportspersonship”), zero tolerance for bullying, vocabulary enhancement (etymology is the first vocabulary word taught), art, and analytical development through playing chess. My on-court co-supervisor, Cindy Liu, was an absolute super star in executing this higher vision.
My daughters Olive and Daisy provided outstanding mechanical demonstrations, and the remainder of staff were incredible.
Outside of camp some USTA NorCal and UTR tournaments were held. In the past we would travel together as a unit. However, under COVID-19 restrictions the SFRPD/High Performance members must arrange their own transportation.
All in all, given the circumstances, it was an outstanding summer.