Tennis -12 Gala at SLTA from May 25 to 27

Anuradha ABEYSEKARA

The inaugural Bartleet Finance-sponsored Tennis-12 Inter-School Tournament will be worked off at the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA) courts on May 25 to 27 with 260 players from 38 schools lined up to vie for honours.

SLTA in collaboration with Bartleet Finance conducting the tournament as an extension of the Tennis-10 program inaugurated in 2010. "What was started in 2010 as an island-wide development program for under-10s has now graduated to the under-12 level,'' said Christopher Barathiraj Pillai, National Coordinator of the SLTA's Junior Tennis Initiatives and Outstation Development Officer.

"Tennis-10 program obviously must evolve with time as the participants grow older, and unless this continuity is maintained, the program is not likely to have an impact on overall development.

Confining it to just the Tennis-10 level will be counterproductive,'' he further said.

Tennis-10 has its roots go back to the SLTA's highly successful Mini Tennis Programme which carried out from 1996 to 2009.

"Mini Tennis obviously was a success which was continued for thirteen long years," said Pillai.

"Mini Tennis was confined to below under eight age category and there after the kids were expected to convert to real tennis.

That that was too big a jump for the budding players and most of the products of mini tennis were dropped out from the game as a result. As a remedy we have introduced Tennis-10 in 2010."

The inaugural island-wide Tennis-10 program has been a great success along with the inter-schools tournament last year, which attracted more than 900 participants representing 88 teams from all over the island.