Jan. 24, 2012
Sophomore tennis player Alex Leatu traveled to Gilbert, Arizona over the winter break to train for the upcoming spring tennis season. Read Leatu’s take on her winter training experience as she prepared for the spring season. The Commodores play host to Texas, Alabama, and Arizona this coming weekend at the ITA Kick-Off here in Nashville at the Currey Tennis Center beginning on Friday.
Before I came to college, I would travel to Gilbert, Arizona to train at a high performance tennis academy that has top junior and professional players, and two coaches, Nick Blackwood and a former top ATP tour player Andrei Pavel. These coaches have helped me so much with my development as a player and also realizing my potential. Therefore, whenever I have the opportunity (break from school), I do my best to pay a visit to Arizona and continue working on polishing my game. This past December, I was in Gilbert for about a week to get back into the swing of things.
The training consisted of one morning hitting session, one morning fitness session, and one afternoon hitting and fitness session. I was on the court every morning with my old doubles partner, Nicole Melichar, who is currently battling on the pro tour, and a top 100 ATP tour player, Mike Yanis. We would do all court drills to improve consistency, footwork, court and mental strategies. In the afternoon sessions there would be match play and point play, putting ourselves in situations to practice intensity and what we worked on in the morning sessions. The fitness included sprints and footwork in the morning, and distance and core work in the afternoons.
The coaches there were all about me controlling the volume of tennis and becoming comfortable on the court. Andrei and Nick are two people who have had incredible confidence in me from the very first day we started working together. I learned from them that a good attitude, confidence, desire, and happiness on court will ultimately lead to success.
Getting back to Vandy, I felt prepared and pumped up for the season. Putting in that kind of work, and being around those who are just as determined as me, was inspiring. Spring season has officially begun! Fight Dores!
