USA U18 ITF Grade 1, Day 1

Saturday 29^th March 2014

It was an excellent first day of preparation here in Carson, USA today and despite Katie having to wake up at 2am local time to get a flight to LA, she worked extremely hard on and off the court.

My trip began yesterday as I left London for the 11 hour flight to Los Angeles but Katie Swan, who lives in Wichita, Kansas, had a very early start this morning to get a 6.30am (4.30am Los Angeles time!) flight out here.

I met Katie at the airport at just after 7.30am and then we headed straight back to the hotel so she could check in and get some breakfast! We then headed over to the USTA training centre for western USA which is also the tournament site for the week. The site is huge and includes the StubHub Centre which is where the LA Galaxy plays their football (not soccer!!) games.

At just after 10.30am we headed into the USTA gym which is located at one end of the cycling track in the Velodrome – very impressive:

We went through an extended warm up to try and get the 3 hour flight out of Katie’s system and then spent the next hour going through firstly a footwork session, and then finished with some speed work to get Katie really sharp.

Katie worked really hard in the session and it’s obvious that her hard work and excellent attitude are two of the main reasons why in the last 12 months she’s gone from having no ranking to now being a few places outside the top 100.

After lunch it was time for our first on court session and because all of the 19 USTA courts were being used for matches we have to use the college courts which are around a 7-8 minute walk away. It might seem like a short distance but a sign like this one makes it a little more difficult!!

From 2-3pm Katie and I had a really good session; she adjusted well to the conditions and even though the first session at a new tournament venue should be spent just getting used to the surface, balls, environment etc. Katie did all that within about 10 minutes! That left us a good 45-50 minutes to go through a lot of the areas that we had talked about over lunch which were based on notes I had made from watching her play in South Africa recently. Katie worked very hard throughout the session and found a superb intensity which in turn transferred into a very high level of hitting.

Shortly after our session we were back on court from 3.30 – 4.45pm with CiCi Bellis from San Francisco. CiCi is currently the 2^nd highest ranked 1999 year of birth player in the U18 ITF rankings (Katie is currently 8^th!) and so I was really looking forward to another high level session. The girls didn’t disappoint; after warming up we went through some drills and the level the girls produced would have easily been comfortable at a $10k / $25k tournament. After around 40 minutes of drilling the girls decided to play a couple of service games each to finish the session. Once again the standard was very high and at 2-2 the players could not be separated (I think Katie edged it though … but I am biased!!!).

When we were finished we headed back to the gym to cool down and then I took Katie through some stretching and injury prevention work to make sure she recovers well from all of the training. While we were doing that the cyclist were training on the track and it was amazing to see not only the abled-bodied athletes train but also some of the Paralympic team – one athlete only had one leg and I’m sure he was going twice as fast as I would have been able to go with two!

After a quick shower and change at the hotel we went off to dinner at Benihana’s where the food was very good. We weren’t able to get a table where the chef cooks everything in front of you as it was very busy on a Saturday night but it was still a fantastic meal.

My day wasn’t quite finished there though and after talking through the plan for tomorrow with Katie I headed to the gym at 9.45pm for a 7.5 mile run! There are now just 2 weeks to go before the London Marathon and this year I’m running for the amazing Make-A-Wish UK. If you are able to support me and help to put a smile on the face of a child with a life-threatening illness please click on the link below – THANK YOU!