What a start to the day - 06:30 alarm, quick shower in the communal shower area (cubicles fortunately, but those timed showers where you have to press a button every 30 seconds to get more water. Really bugging).
Then a walk to the dining hall to join a queue of about 30 firemen and 20 tennis players. Brick hard bread with nutella and a banana washed down with a bowl of luke-warm tea (yes a bowl, they don't do mugs or cups here). Can you tell how much I love the place yet?
We then got a car to the courts! The transport team are all volunteer club members using their own cars, they start at 06:45 and are on the go until the end of play. Most of them are older guys and do a wonderful job. The whole tourney is a real community event, I'm told it really boosts the local tourist trade as it uses 1200 hotel rooms during the week. Pity I didn't get one of them! The LTA group managed to though and Mark Taylor (one of the LTA captains) brought me in a croissant to the club this morning.
So my day is getting better already. We hit outdoors at 07:40 (freezing) and shared a court with 2 Russian boys whose mothers were glued to the fencing, chewing gum and barking from time to time. At 08:00 the Swiss clown appeared, marvellous, while his player ran around the court to warm up, he stood court side jogging on the spot and then broke into a serious display of exaggerated shadow stroking! So wanted to get my camera out but it would have been too obvious.
In the Belgian team mini bus now on way to Thouars for first match. More Later...
Jeez I've hit the wall. Right after dinner. Maybe it was that umpteenth plate of soggy pasta that did it. Luckily it was the player disco at the club tonight so I sat in the bar area with that "the lights are on but nobody's home" look on my face and no one noticed :)
One of the (many) things I like about the Bressuire club is that it's so basic and is run by and for the community. How refreshing it is to pay 50cents (50p) for a large bottle of water and 1 euro for a coffee. At the centre I work out of, its £2.50 for a large water and £1.60 for a coffee. Sound familiar?
There are 17 tennis courts - 8 indoor, 4 outdoor classic clay (carpet with clay on top), 2 tennis quick and 3 mini courts, one of which has a practice wall. It's part of a municipal sports area (like Thouars club) where there is a table tennis hall (doubling as the tourney dining hall), a badminton hall, a football pitch and rugby pitch.
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It's the club members who run the event and what a great job they do. These tourneys are a vital part of a young players development especially if they travel as a team and with a coach who knows and understands them both as kids and as tennis players. But it's a costly exercise, check out our budget:
The entry fee is 15 euros and accomodation plus all meals is 36 euros per person per day. That's pretty reasonable but per player we reckon to spend about £250 each on accom/meals/entry fee plus transport will be about £120 each.
So 7 kids at £370 each = £2,590 plus 2 coaches fees/accom/meals/phone calls - about £1800? Total cost about £4400. That's before I add in the physio bill for my chronic backache from the damned bed or my detoxing from the pasta and stale bread! Joking.
If you split that between 7 players, it's over £600 each, which is not cheap!
I got chatting to a Dutch coach today. She used to be top 50 and is on the same wavelength as me in terms of allowing kids to be kids and not getting too intense with them at a young age. (Why shouldn't they have a waffle with hot chocolate sauce when matches/training is done for the day?) The French are like that too, plenty of time to get serious about it all in a few years when the kids know whether they really want to do it. And anyway, they learn much more when they are having fun.
I saw a few scary parents today, a mad dad (Eastern European) who has already been reported to the ref by another coach who saw him physically and verbally abusing his child. Gonna check him out a bit more tomorrow and a couple of Belarussian mums who would not look out of place in Prisoner from Cell Block H.
As I said before, there's hardly any parents here and almost all of those who are, are perfectly chilled, almost :)
More tomorrow.