Emma Wiesenfeld

View Original

My first Team USA Training Camp

Cary, NC - May 2022: Team USA Regional Training Camp.

A special experience to remember! 🤩 This weekend I got invited to a TEAM USA regional camp. It was in Cary, North Carolina. I was very excited to go and didn’t really know what to expect. From the beginning everyone was very kind and welcoming. We had a mental coach and a fitness coach. Before practice we had the mental coach talk to us and he was telling us about journaling and visualization. Journaling is very important before practice because it gives you a goal and a clear image of what you want to work on. That way you train with a purpose. Visualization sets you up for a great practice because in your mind you are imagining yourself hitting great shots and moving perfectly left and right. After mental, we had a dynamic warm up with the fitness coach. It lasted about 30 minutes and it really warmed you up. We did stretches, sprints, etc… Then we got to hit! In the morning we did a lot of drills. Then we had a little cool down. After, we had lunch and again talked to the mental coach. We then had our warm up, we hit, and we had an extended cool down to finish off the day. Basically it was like this every day. Every coach there was giving us advice and was very positive.

The third day was the best day in my opinion. We had a Billie Jean King/Davis cup kind of day. We were split into 2 teams, boys and girls were combined. We first had to pick a name and our cheer. We were The Attackers. We paired each other up with our mixed doubles partners and we started playing. The energy was unreal on the court. Mixed doubles was awesome. Then we played singles. The specific goal I chose was to get out of my comfort zone, being agressive, coming to the net often, and whenever I had the chance to move forward even 1 step. So I did that in my match , I did more mistakes than usual, but the more I do it the more natural it will feel, and it will feel very good!! At the end we won by a lot and we did our cheer. I want to say thank you to my parents, especially my dad for bringing me. After 4 months out with my foot, and only about 7 weeks playing, I enjoyed being able to be part of Team USA. I am very happy to have met new coaches, made new friends, and had an experience to remember. Thank you @usta

Here is the coaching evaluation report of my 3-day camp

See this link in the original post