It’s a love match at the Three Anchor Bay tennis club where primary school pupils from the Seven Steps Academy for the Deaf are enjoying tennis lessons.
Marina Paioni, head of department at the academy, says they are grateful to the tennis club for providing their pupils with the opportunity to learn a new sport because such activities are not available at their Zonnebloem location.
“We have very little safe spaces for the children to play and this is the challenge of inner city schools that have a lack of outdoor facilities, so we have to take them to Green Point park to play,” said Ms Paioni.
“It’s so important for these hard of hearing children who have to focus really hard on their learning, they really have to concentrate all day and playing tennis gives them a outlet to use up their energy,” she said.
The students travel from as far as Masiphumelele, Delft, Kuils River, and Bridgetown, and the school provides transportation to and from Green Point Park.
“We do have co-curricular activities at the school during the day which forms part of the life skills training and we take them once a week to the park where they play soccer of just run around.”
“The coaches have been really kind to offer their time and equipment to teach the kids to play tennis and we are grateful for these formal lessons as the kids don’t have access to such facilities,” Ms Paioni said.
Tia Alexander, a mentor at the tennis club, approached Holly Wessels, a Grade 4 teacher at Seven Steps who takes the students to the park.
“I saw them playing at the park and asked Holly if they would like to do tennis lessons with us. She said they were not exposed to the sport and that it would be great for the kids,” said Ms Alexander.
Ms Alexander adds that tennis coaching is about more than just physical ability; it is also about mindset and engaging with one another in a sporting environment.
“I was surprised that they picked up the instructions so quickly, I was expecting them to struggle and to do sign language and I thought it would be difficult considering their hearing impairment, but they follow us quite well, they are well behaved and so excited to be here so it’s enjoyable coaching them. I must say they are quite competitive as well which is a good thing,” she said.
The students have been with the tennis club for two months, and coach Angelo Johannes says that a few of them have natural talent that will be developed in the coming year.
“It’s my very first time coaching deaf kids and I thought that communication would be a big problem but it’s not , they cooperate and they do the drills properly, one or two are a bit rebellious but they are kids so that expected,” said Mr Johannes who has been with the club for four years.
“They are engaging and their confidence has grown over the past few weeks. There were some basic elements that were lacking and there was a bit of anxiousness, I mean they are new to this sport but there were four kids that showed us their talent and we doing separate training with them.”
He claims that deaf tennis is not popular in South Africa and that this pro-bono training has given them hope of doing tennis coaching for a longer period of time.
“There is potential for tennis development and I feel that they could compete at higher level. I’m keen to see how they compete against kids that are not hard of hearing and they will be a good example that having a so-called disability is not a disability,” he said.
