By Tatiana Batalla and Ivette Nieto, Marketing department of ASC Florida
This past weekend we had a special visit from a group called YPO. YPO is a community of leaders that are global executives. Our academy was lucky enough to be able to host the first YPO event thanks to Jamin the leader of the community and his team. When Emilio Sanchez told us to prepare a brochure for the event we were confused, we didn’t know how important the YPO would be and what would be the event like. We started digging into what we could do to welcome this group of important people into our home, our academy and make them enjoy a tennis retreat where they can rest from their business routine and discover the love for the sport. We came up with a great program that had needs & leads with some light breakfast to start off, personalized clinics, competition matches in singles and doubles, hydro tennis lessons, stretching sessions, dinner food themes, and speeches from 3 of the most important people of this sport. Let me tell you a little bit about it. The program was planned as a tennis retreat weekend.
During the first day, after all the introductions were made, the group came to court. During the first day, the coaches started working on a personalized clinic. Our group of 8 coaches was divided into 8 courts, each one was working on a specific aspect of the game. The groups were made of 3 people that would be rotating each court to work on a different drill and get to know our coaches’ skills. Later on, they went and played several competition matches in a round-robin format where they would compete against each other. At the end of the day, the ASC kitchen was getting ready to host the first official dinner, the food theme was Wimbledon night, excellent roast beef, some vegetables, and strawberries and cream for dessert.
That night we had the pleasure to have Stacey Allaster as our guest speaker. Stacey Allaster for those who don’t know her, is one of the biggest role models in the tennis industry, during her career she has trusted women’s sports and has worked hard for the equality of the prize money events. She has worked for the Ontario Tennis Association as membership sales coordinator and director of player development. Later on, she became the Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Tournament Director of the Rogers Cup. In July 2009, Allaster was promoted to be the chairman and CEO of the WTA Tour, and her latest achievement was becoming a chief executive of the WTA tournament director of the US Open, becoming the first woman to do so in the event’s 140-year existence. Her speech impacted us in a great way, as she explained her career of love for tennis, she told us several stories about the US Open. We gave Stacey our ASC Identity insignia, something to show her our support and that demonstrated that she is a true example of dedication, hard work, passion, effort, respect, discipline, and every value that our academy represents.
During the second day of training the goal was to work on singles matches and singles personalized training, with the sun above their heads, the tennis session was hard work that paid off great. That second afternoon, we had the pleasure to enjoy a nice hydrotennis session and stretching with coach Stephen and, a nice cookout barbecue outside accompanied by Arantxa Sanchez speech, former number 1 in the world. Her speech amazed everyone, she talked about her career, her feelings about being at the top of the world rankings, and her passion for tennis. Arantxa spoke about her love for the family and how did her game improve next to Emilio, her older brother. The night ended up great and, the next morning, we started the third and last YPO ASC Tennis event day.
During this third and last day, the training consisted of a doubles day, so we had the fantastic idea of mixing our fantastic group of the YPO people with the academy players that stay during our annual program training. They enjoyed some doubles matches with them and the group of coaches including Arantxa & Emilio. Later on, they did some personalized clinics to work on their doubles game as well. That third night was the last night so, we brought our Spanish spirit and made a big paella for dinner accompanied by some Spanish appetizers: Spanish Jam, some manchego cheese, some olives, and great wines imported from Spain. The night ended up with lots of presents from the award ceremony, a signed picture to have a memory and, the last speech from our CEO & Former pro-Emilio Sanchez. Emilio spoke about the passion and the joy he had during his tennis years and explained how did he come out with the mindset of opening an academy for all the children that wanted to pursue his same dreams and have a bigger range of opportunities to grow and become their best version of themselves.
Joy, happiness, tennis, passion, excitement, hard work, love, great, fun, and other words came out as a final word from our fantastic group of YPO as they were asked to describe this unique experience. This event was the first of many, in two weeks we will be hosting another one next to our YPO members, we are excited to see how this second event comes up and we are hoping we can do many more and write a great chapter for the books of the Sanchez-Casal academy journey.
Tatiana Batalla and Ivette Nieto
Marketing department of ASC Florida
