Middle School Tennis Tryout Prep: The 3-Week Plan

Everything in this plan builds toward the challenge matches on day two, when a coach is watching whether you can keep the ball in play and keep your head when you miss.

Stand at the baseline on the deuce side. Before every serve, do the same three things: bounce the ball twice, breathe out, toss to the same spot above your hitting shoulder. Serve 20 balls into the box, then switch sides and serve 20 more. Count how many go in. Do not swing harder to fix a miss; slow the toss down instead. Forty serves is the cap this week. The shoulder is still learning the motion, and it gets more reps next week, not today.

Draw a line on the wall at net height, about three feet up. Stand fifteen feet back. Hit forehands only, let the ball bounce once, and count how many in a row you land above the line. Then backhands. Then alternate. Write down your best count for each. The number does not matter yet; beating it next week does.

Set two cones eight feet apart. Stand between them, hop into a small split step, land on the balls of both feet, then shuffle to one cone, touch it, shuffle back through the middle, touch the other. Twenty seconds on, thirty off, six rounds. Feel your feet land under your hips at the split and stay there. That little hop is what a coach notices in a group of thirty kids.

Put one cone in the middle of the deuce service box and one on the wide edge. Same routine as last week, but pick a cone before each serve and aim at it. Thirty serves per side. Then ten second serves in a row: slower, higher over the net, every one in. A second serve that goes in is worth more at tryouts than a first serve that looks great and misses.

Both of you on the deuce side. Hit forehands crosscourt and count out loud together to ten without a miss. Miss, start over. Then ad side backhands to ten. Then one of you hits crosscourt while the other hits down the line, and switch who runs. Aim three feet over the net and a few feet inside the lines. This is the drill most middle school coaches run on day one, so you might as well be good at it.

Cone on the forehand side, cone on the backhand side, cone in the center behind the baseline. Shadow swing a forehand at the first cone, shuffle back to the center cone, split step, shadow a backhand at the other cone, recover again. Ten trips. The recovery to the middle is the point, not the swing.

Serve, your partner returns crosscourt, and you have one job on the next ball: hit it crosscourt, deep, in. Then play the point out. Ten serves from each side, then swap roles. Feel yourself land from the serve and immediately split step. The serve is not over until you are ready for the return.

After every point in every drill this week, do the same thing: turn your back to the net, walk toward the fence, look at your strings, take one breath, say the score out loud, walk back. Win or lose the point, same walk. Coaches watch what a kid does after a miss more closely than the miss.

Play first to four games with no-ad scoring, which is what most school tryouts use. Say the score before every serve. Call your own lines and give any ball you are not sure about to your partner. Two or three sets if there is time. Finish with four baseline-to-net-and-back sprints, walking between them, water after. Then take the next day fully off. Three hard days in a row at this age is how elbows start to hurt, and a sore arm at tryouts helps nobody.

Run the plan, then after the first tryout afternoon, tell us how many serves went in and whether the rally held up once a coach was standing there. That is where the next plan starts.