Youngsters pursue the tennis dream

SURF Coast coach Olivia Rich is a girl on a mission: to find the state’s – no, the nation’s – next big tennis star, or stars for that matter!

In her own younger days, Olivia played on the WTA tour and represented Australia on the Junior Fed Cup team and now she is thrilled to be coach and mentor to some of the best and most motivated young players in the Geelong region.

Olivia was recently accepted in the Next Generation High Performance Program through Tennis Australia and teams up with Brianna Morgan, a high performance strength and conditioning coach, who has had the experience of collegiate tennis in the United States, via a scholarship to the university of Houston, along with elite level organisations in sports science.

Sounds like a formidable combination of tennis knowledge!

Surf Coast youngsters Teal Studer, 12, and Rupert Sever, 10 are both ranked fourth in their age group in the state and both have aspirations to become professional tennis players, via scholarships from Winning Edge Tennis Performance Program.

Mac Walters, 11, was selected in the Melbourne Super 10s program last year and competed in the inter-school challenge recently, finishing in third place in the Barwon Region.

Eva-May Jablonski, 15, and younger sister Matilda, 11, won the 2019 Surfcoast club championship earlier this year and represented the Barwon Region at the recent Pat Cash inter-regional challenger and both played in last weekend’s Labour Day tournament at Warrnambool, where Matilda and Mac took out the 11 and under doubles title. Also worth mentioning that coach Olivia Rich won the open singles at Warrnambool. It was a big weekend!

What a talented group of youngsters they have down there at Winning Edge. Suffice to say, the future of tennis is assured with this lot leading the way.

Log into winningedgetennis.com and find out more about what’s happening in the big, wide and wonderful world of young tennis aspirants!