The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s updated release: How to Attract a College Athletic Scholarship. College standout Steve Johnson provides his view on college tennis. Pre-order e-Book price is $1.99 To Order Click Here
Attracting a top tennis scholarship is a serious business. Let’s laugh a bit about how a “Tennis Parent Needed” internet job post would read? With tongue firmly in cheek, I created the following piece for Tennis Magazine. (Detailed tennis parent job descriptions are found in Amazon’s #1 Best Seller: The Tennis Parents Bible.)
ELITE TENNIS PARENT JOB POST:
- Positive team player needed for 168 hours per week position.
- Candidate must possess a universal desire to be screamed at, talked down to, and be willing to be hated 5-6 days a week.
- The successful applicant must have an uncanny sense of “Buddha-like” calmness in an often psychotic, stressful, chaotic environment.
- Candidate must be willing to work early mornings, late evenings, and most weekends.
- Candidate must be willing to forget about their own personal interests, workout routines, sports, and hobbies.
- Candidate must not expect to go on vacation due to the year-round tournament obligations.
- The successful applicant should plan on missing traditional family holidays due to Thanksgiving Nationals, Winter Super Nationals, Spring Break/Easter Bowl, Labor Day, and Memorial Day Events.
Requirements:
- H R Skills- Interviewing, hiring, and firing tennis coaches, trainers, hitters, and off-court specialists.
- Accounting /Banking Skills- Possess an extremely thick checkbook and be willing and able to max out their major credit cards.
- Designated Driver- Must be willing to put 100 thousand miles on the family car and enjoy most of your meals behind the wheel.
- Expect your child to occasionally go “Tennis-Brain Dead”- Be willing and able to accept that your child will occasionally forget everything they were taught during the last $5000.00 worth of lessons and blow several events a year.
- Scheduling Manager- World-class juggling skills required to organize the ever-changing schedules of booking practice courts, times, hired hitters practice partners, lessons, and events.
- Booking Agent- Flexible skill sets required to book last-minute airlines, cars, and hotels.
- VIP/24 Hour Courier Service: Laundry service, racquet re-stringing service, drug store pharmaceuticals pick-up, and delivery service, and bedtime psychology sessions.
- Fashion Coordinator/Personal Shopper- Purchasing only the latest and greatest shoes and matching clothes.
- Maintenance Knowledge- General Maintenance of equipment such as racquet re-gripping, clothing malfunctions, shoelace replacement …
- Parental Intuition- Must have the uncanny ability to become expendable and invisible in a seconds notice and appear bright-eyed and happy to help two minutes later.
- Match Performance Review- Must be willing to evaluate a crummy performance by first pointing out fifty positive observations but NEVER share negative feedback without starting WWIII.
Wages and Expenses:
- There is no pay for this position.
- All the work and travel-related expenses will not be reimbursed.
“NCAA scholarships are attracted by a parental choice…not by chance.”
