Last Sunday, I was a coach for a pickleball clinic at The Pickle Fence with three other coaches. This was my first time coaching for a pickleball clinic so I was a bit nervous. I wasn't really sure what to expect until it happened. The session started around 9am but I already arrived around 7:20am. At the beginning, Jason who was one of the coaches, went through the basic rules as well as demoing some of the rules. After that there was a dynamic warmup to help prevent injuries and get everybody warmed up.
After the warm up, the attendees were separated into three different groups with about 5 people per group. This was done because we had three different stations on three different coaches with each coach taking charge of one station. They would rotate after 25-30 minutes with a water break in between. We had one coach overseeing, taking photos and ensuring everybody was on schedule. We had one station for dinking, one station for serving & returning and one station for moving up to the kitchen. I had the station for moving up to the kitchen.
My station was focused on the serving team's perspective. I didn't go too deep into the mechanics like split stepping and all since some of the attendees never played sports ever. My main goal was for them to understand why and how to move up to the kitchen. I explained to them that moving up to the kitchen closes off the court and gives them an edge on their opponent. They are able to hit down on the ball instead of up which makes it a lot easier to play since you have less margin for error. I didn't teach them how to hit a drop since it was more technical. I just wanted them to focus more on getting the ball over the net and as they get better they can try their best to keep the ball low.
Overall, this was a new experience for me and I enjoyed it. We will definitely be doing more clinics in the future and I hope to see these attendees continue playing pickleball.