April 25th, 2019 Newsletter

52 Days until Summer Lessons!

Summer is approaching fast! It’s an exciting time for SPUT as we finalize our summer coaching roster and begin the big push for summer. We program all across the city of Saint Paul and provide scholarships to any family that could use some help investing in summer lessons. Why? Because we know that kids in our programs become better leaders, we know that our coaches learn responsibility and pride for their community, and we know that tennis has the amazing ability to teach valuable life lessons and bond people together. Summer is when we all get to come together to learn new skills, meet new friends, and enjoy the best things in life. We hope your family joins us. Read about some of our updates below!

Saint Paul Urban Tennis has had such a significant impact on my life, I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today without SPUT.

Coach Eli Freberg, Student at the University of Minnesota

New Registration System – Easier and More Intuitive!

In 2019, SPUT launched our new digital platform. While it will bring us many exciting capabilities in the coming year, we’re still working out some kinks as we learn the new system. We’ve been hearing feedback that it wasn’t as intuitive as families had hoped, so we spent a lot of time trying to make it more straight forward and easier to navigate. Here is what we did:

• Captured all lessons under one event – makes it easier to register multiple kids
• Locations and times are noted at multiple levels – this should make it easier to know exactly which class you are registering for
• Paper registration – still having trouble? Click HERE for a paper form. You can fill it out and email it to admin@urbantennis.org. A staff member will follow up shortly to complete your registration.

What’s with the different colored tennis balls?

If you watch competitive tennis, you might be used to the neon green (or are they yellow?) balls whizzing back and forth on the court. Modern tennis balls bounce high and fast, which is great for competition but hard for learning. That is why we use differentiated balls that bounce slower and lower to make learning easier. Learning proper technique early on can pay big dividends for players later on in their careers and the color coded balls we use for instruction make developing proper technique a bit simpler.

Meet one of our sites: Arlington-Arkwright Park!

Arlington-Arkwright Park is a fantastic park on the north/east side of Saint Paul. The courts were redone in 2015 and are some of the freshest courts in town. The surrounding park also has a fenced in dog park to let Fido run around leash free, a basketball court, spacious fields, a skate park, and plenty of shade on those hot sunny days. Read more about the park here!

Invest in your community! Volunteer with SPUT!

We have many opportunities for passionate individuals to advance opportunities for youth in our community. Email josh@urbantennis.org to learn about our volunteer opportunities, including:

• Reading Volunteer: Commit to one or more reading sessions with youth in our programs. We will provide you with training and resources to lead 30 minute literacy activities with kids in our programs. Help our kids fall in love with reading!
• Become a SPUT Booster: If you know how great our programs are for youth in our community, help us spread the word! We’ll set you up with materials and a special coupon code to register friends, family, and neighbors! Plus, we’ll give you a special “swag kit” to show off your SPUT pride and look good in the process.
• Table with SPUT: We like to support community events around town such as Cinco de Mayo and National Night Out. If you would like to table with us and give families a look into our programs, let us know.
• Volunteer Coach: Help support quality instruction! We’ll give you all the tools and skills necessary to support our summer coaches. Join the amazing community of role-models and leaders that are our coaches. Coaching experience not necessary, we can teach you that!