My brain Tennis vs Covid

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By Emilio Sánchez Vicario, Founder & CEO of Sanchez-Casal Academy

I am Emilio Sanchez. I am 55 years old. In the eighties and nineties, I competed at a pretty good level and even won some Grand Slam tournaments and Olympic medals. After that professional stage, I coached tennis players individually as well, such as Davis Cup teams. I combined my work as a coach with founding my own Tennis Academies, both in Spain and the USA, where students could take advantage of opportunities that tennis and education providers. I also shared my knowledge on TV and created my own Foundation, “Fundación Emilio Sánchez Vicario”, to help children achieve a better life through tennis.

My zodiac sign is Gemini, and for those who know us, we are thinkers, we are unpredictable, we love people and we care for them. We also have a very curious ability: our mind works, every night, in a way capable of creating little movies that we then translate into reality the next day.

So, I see my life divided into stages: 8 years before dedicated to tennis, 10 years developing myself as a tennis player, 14 years working as a professional tennis player, and 20 years coaching. It was probably a normal evolution, until last year when Covid arrived.

Now, I can say I am 55, or better, I am 54 plus “1 Covid year”, because Covid changed everything for me. I have always loved tennis, but since the virus came into our lives, many more people came back to tennis, up to 4 million new players! Isn’t it amazing? Tennis has given me many things in life: it has built my character; it has made me competitive, resilient, a fighter, and a committed person. And, in these difficult days, my sport has given me hope, drive, and the strength to move forward. I couldn’t be more grateful for tennis. Until now, I did not really know how important tennis was to me, but thanks to this past year, I can say I am who I am thanks to tennis and thanks to the way tennis has taught me to accept mistakes, defeats, and losses.

Thus, in my mind, the last 365 days had two versions: the “day” version with my passion and romance with tennis and the “night” version, with Covid and the fear that surrounded it. I mean “C19 guy” appeared in so many different colors, voices, actions, and situations and all of them aimed at destroying my brain. The Coronavirus hosted each of those 365 nights, and I played 365 matches against it. Luckily, when the next morning arrived, tennis offered me another story, becoming my partner to face up the situation. And I am not complaining about it, but I have lived with it so closely for such a long time that despite it is now, part of me, Tennis has had a much bigger impact on my life than Covid.

The past year, I have been working with the best juniors in our Academy, and that has been another of my big challenges. Some of them committed to great universities, others are still waiting to be accepted. But the high demand that the process required, helped me to get extra motivation. I love these kids.

During this time, I also decided to start doing events and since last fall we have been organizing tournaments non-stop, holding lots of UTR, USTA, and ITF events. My team has done an outstanding job, they are so good that we became the UTR Club of the Year 2020, and we were also named the number one academy in the world. We have been the first academy to host USTA Pro Circuit events during the Covid times, and we have hosted those events, strictly complying to all regulations, testings, and controls to avoid Covid. I can’t be more grateful to my team.

2020 has been an “eye-opener” year for me. I  have been lucky to live in the USA, and especially in Florida, where I can play tennis every day, I can be with my family, and of course deal with all the regulations of the virus, but still live. I am so grateful to the USA that I cannot express in words how much I admire this country and the way they face adversity.

Every day, my stories with the students, rackets, and balls fulfill my soul and give my mind enough materials to face my movie and stories at night. But then, the next day, tennis took its place and triggered this amazing mental reaction thanks to which I was able to forget the night before, renewing my hope, drive, energy, and a special state to face whatever I was doing, coaching, organizing or managing. I am so thankful!

As you can see, I am a dreamer and I try to get my student-athletes to also dream, dream big, learn to handle adversity so they can write their own stories, and hopefully, one day they may see my sport as their ally to become the best version of themselves.  Tennis also gives them the tools to continue to grow and brings us together. I love to dedicate my time to these student-athletes, to watch matches, to workout with them, and to create this amazing bond with tennis. I know that one day in the future, they will remember this journey and they will think that all the effort was worth it. For me, it is like that.

My Academy in Florida is spectacular, we have amazing facilities, but If I had to choose only one of our strengths, I would choose my team, a group of dedicated professionals who care about the student-athletes, who live for them, giving their best to help the student-athletes to become what they want to become. It is inspiring to have such an amazing staff. I thank the kids, the staff, friends, and family for creating real stories far more powerful than the ones the VIRUS used to create in my mind each of those 365 nights. Congrats to all of them and see you at ASC, playing tennis as always!

Our History

 

 

 

 

Emilio Sánchez Vicario
Founder and CEO of Sanchez-Casal Academy

WHAT WILL WE DO THIS SUMMER?

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By Eva Pascual, Marketing department, Academia Sánchez-Casal.

These days, most parents are asking ourselves, what are our children going to do this summer? Usually, summer is a time when our children get to enjoy their favorite sports, and even, work on improving a second language, often English.

However, the uncertainty that is going on in the world around us raises questions that are difficult to answer. Will we be able to travel abroad? Will it be safe for our children? For this reason, at Sánchez-Casal Barcelona, we have several exciting opportunities to help you decide.

 

First of all, we want to inform you that all of our programs are “safe.” In order to protect our students and our staff, ASC complies rigorously with all the security, hygiene and cleaning protocols set by the Government and world health organizations. Our main objective is to ensure the health of all members of the Sánchez-Casal family, by adapting our programs to make them SAFER than ever while maintaining HIGH PERFORMANCE standards.

Our admissions department is always available to guide through navigating travel restrictions and safety measures. Just tell us where you are coming from, or where you would like to go, and we will inform you of the necessary requirements so that you can travel with complete peace of mind.

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Secondly, we want to offer you the best international tennis + English experience without ever leaving Spain. This summer, if you live in Spain, you don’t have to travel to enjoy the best intensive English course and high-performance tennis training. You can enroll your children in our Summer Camps, run by the best coaches from the Sánchez-Casal Academy using our unique ASC 360 Tennis System and native English teachers from our international school, ES International School. All on the same campus, surrounded by nature, and just 10 minutes away from the center of Barcelona.

Of course, you can also choose our traditional Summer Camp, that does not include an intensive English course, or our special Summer Camp for players under 12. All with the care and supervision that these young players and children need.

Finally, we want you to feel confident when making your reservation so, in addition to offering you a 20% discount on our summer programs(*), we also offer you free cancellation up to 48 hours before the start of the program. Book your summer program now without worrying about anything other than ensuring the best summer experience for your children.

Don’t think twice, give us a call and we’ll talk about how to make the most of this summer.

(*) Only ASC Barcelona

Eva Pascual
Marketing Departament, Academia Sánchez-Casal

Play-Based Learning, the funniest way to learn!

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By ES International School BCN team

Each year, our elementary teachers take different professional development courses that keep them up to date with the philosophies and techniques of the IB Primary Years Programme (IB PYP). IB training encourages critical thinking, self-reflection and continuous improvement as a teacher. It gives them access to innovative and diverse education frameworks, planning documents, teaching resources and evaluation tools that improve student learning.

First grade teacher, Mr. Matthews recently completed an IB course about the benefits of Play Based Learning. “It inspired me to explore some exciting ideas with the other elementary teachers in terms of how we can integrate more play-based and outdoor learning into our educational experiences,” explained Mr. Matthews.

 
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Currently, the PYP unit of inquiry is ‘How We Express Ourselves’, which has been the perfect opportunity for elementary teachers to develop learning experiences with an emphasis on drama, dramatic play, music, creativity and the senses. Second and 3rd grade have been focusing on poetry, photography, film and architecture. They have designed and directed their own film, and also built their own smart skyscrapers inspired by and produced with materials from nature.

Fourth and 5th grade have explored expression through music and dance. They have engaged in voice lessons and the exploration of movement through a Tik Tok dance challenge. In addition to this, four students will work with Mr. Matthews to create a dramatic performance to present to the other elementary students.

 
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We look forward to seeing more learning through play throughout the semester!

 

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ES International School BCN team

Bringing the high level competition back to Sanchez-Casal Academy

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By Tatiana Batalla and Ivette Nieto, Marketing department of ASC Florida 

Our post is dedicated to all the companies, starting with UTR & BMW of Naples, that made tennis competition possible, that brought back joy to tennis, and gave us the honor to be awarded as the UTR best Club of the year 2020.

We are also thankful and want to dedicate this post to the USTA for giving us the opportunity to be pioneers in hosting in our academy the first USTA & BMW of Naples ITF’s events of $25,000 Men’s & Women’s in the US starting the second week of February.

Tennis players are build up in an environment of competition. They are strong, powerful, fast, energetic, hard workers, and competitive. They thrive to be competitive, their ambition to win matches runs through their blood. Each one of the players has an ideal stage of maybe becoming the number one in the world, or becoming the greatest tennis player of all times among others. Each athlete has to complete a path towards their goal, the path will have many barriers, many obstacles, and difficulties, but great athletes are able to overcome those to reach their goals.

For that reason, our academy and the idea of building athletes, building their character, and making them become the best version of themselves has to have a lot of work behind it including a competition to achieve goals.

As Emilio Sanchez CEO of Sanchez-Casal says: “Our goal is to create a strong tennis community in Naples. Bringing Pro Tours with a high level of tennis and valuable players to our town is part of our commitment.”

As mentioned at the beginning, this year we have been pioneers in hosting a new series of tournaments made by the UTR PRO SERIES AMERICAS with prize money of $25,000. These tournaments are made for high UTR ranked athletes such as ATP Athletes, College athletes, and Junior athletes to be able to compete at a high level and show their best game. The tournaments are organized in a round-robin format match play where each draw of players compete against each other for later on, get placed in three winning places that will compete for the prize.

This 2021 has amazing news for our high-performance academy since we just got accepted to host the first USPTA & ITF $25,000 by BMW tournament events. The first one in February 15th-21st followed by the second event on February 22nd-28th and the third event for women’s category $25,000 that will start on May 3rd-9th. Each one of these USTA tournaments will have the opportunity to have a wildcard by competing in a UTR BMW Wildcard event $1,000 starting next weekend February 30th for USTA Event 1, followed by a second wildcard on February 8th for the USTA 2nd event, and the weekend of April 24th a UTR BMW Wildcard event $1,000 for the women’s event of the USTA.

In March the UTR PRO SERIES will be back with us with the Clay 4th event starting on March 7th-14th hosting a $25,000 men’s event.

With all these great tournaments our goal is that, within a safe environment to be able to build tennis players to have the opportunity to show their game, to compete, to fulfill their goals, and to become great athletes. Because for us, any opportunity is a great opportunity and we are willing to bring back the joy and the love for the sport.

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Tatiana Batalla and Ivette Nieto
Marketing department
Academia Sanchez-Casal Naples, Florida

HELLO 2021!

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By Emilio Sánchez Vicario, Founder & CEO of Sanchez-Casal Academy

At long last, we have come to the end of the year 2020! We can’t help but look forward to one of the most unexpected years of our lives finally ending. We are truly ready for this year, which has brought us a new disease that continues to knock down the whole world, to be left in the past.

Indeed, it has been a tough year, but we have already talked about it too much! Now that there are only a few days left, we prefer to think positively and remember everything it has taught us.

To begin, we have been at home longer and have been able to spend more time with family. It is actually a privilege to be able to enjoy, unhurriedly, the company of those we love the most. Especially in the world of competitive sport, this is a unique opportunity. Suddenly, all tournaments, travel, and trips were canceled. Once we accepted the new situation, we again appreciated the value of tranquility, of the “slow life”. We have cleaned our houses top to bottom, we have cooked, and we have played with our children young and old. We have lived “as a family” again or, in some cases, even for the first time!

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We have also had to re-invent ourselves. All our routines, our habits, our day to day lives have changed radically. When our tennis academies closed due to the pandemic, we had to adapt to working remotely and we had to find solutions to continue offering our top quality service to all our student-athletes. Overnight, we all become “film-makers.” Our coaches and physical trainers gave their best to continue training their athletes from home. The teachers at our school, ES International School, quickly adapted to online teaching and accompanied our students in their new stage of study at home. All the ASC staff tried to stay in close contact with our students, being, more than ever, a family.But the best of all was the response from our student-athletes. They, more than anyone, have adapted to change and are now even more resilient. Perhaps being athletes has helped us in this process. The condition of failing and recovering is inherent to the sport and it is just what we have had to do in 2020. Yes, our discipline has helped us to continue striving, to continue overcoming adverse situations, and to continue looking to the future with optimism.

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A new year is coming and, with it, our energy is renewed. We know that it will probably not be an easy year either, but we are going to face it just as we would a tennis match: point by point, offering the best of ourselves, forgetting about mistakes quickly. Likewise, we will stop criticizing ourselves after our failures and will face the adversity of the next point with all our best energy. We are going to focus on the day to day, we are going to stay healthy and fit, and we are going to continue studying. As the family that we are, we will continue to take care of each other, we will be more supportive, more understanding, and more humble. Because, as Carlo Magno said, “the destiny of all depends on the behavior of each one.” We want to emulate worthwhile leaders, specially the ones who are close to us, so that we can continue learning together and move forward.

We say goodbye to 2020 and we welcome 2021 with a HELLO full of hope, strength, and passion. I only have one thing left to say this year: I wish you, with all my heart, a happy holiday season and a better 2021!

Sanchez-Casal Anual Program

Emilio Sanchez Vicario
Founder & CEO of Sanchez-Casal Academy

Developing an Eye for Detail

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By ES International School BCN team

Being a creative, critical thinker is one of our Core Values at ESIS, and developing this side of ourselves is integral in every classroom. These skills are important for problem solving as well as reading and writing, and attention to detail is paramount in being successful in any undertaking. This semester in Middle School, Mr. Gaudin was inspired to share his love for photography and the joy that being creative with a camera can bring. “Photography has been something I have had a passion for since I was young,” said Mr. Gaudin. “I minored in photography in college and I was a photojournalist for the US Army for five years.”

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He wants to expose his students to the art of photography and to have them learn key skills that have them focusing on the details in their images. This way, they can make pictures instead of take pictures.

Recently, students from the photography class went on an excursion to Sitges in order to use the skills they had learned. They participated in a photography competition and were asked to take pictures in four key categories: Fine Art, Photojournalism, Landscape, and Street Art Photography.

“I was amazed by the enthusiasm of the kids on the trip, and the excitement they showed when they created something special,” remembered Mr. Gaudin. Many of the students enjoyed using the clear photography ball, or lensball, to create unique images.

Fine Art Peter Ye

It was a difficult decision to choose the winners in each category, but we want to congratulate Peter Ye, Iris Scheepstra, Troy Scevenels, and Emilia Hamborg-Thomsen for getting first prizes. Romina Fuentes Fonseca and Roman Ussoyan got an honorable mention for their photographs. “Of course, I want to keep learning about photography,” said Romina Fuentes Fonseca. For us this is the ultimate goal – inspiring our students!

View the winning Photography Contest photos here!

 

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ES International School BCN team

When they talk about the greatest coach, make sure it’s you

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By Tatiana Batalla and Ivette Nieto, Marketing department of ASC Florida 

What makes someone a great coach?

What characteristics does a great coach need to have?

During the ICI courses provided at ASC, these are the questions we typically get from the participants. I believe that a better question someone can ask is: how far am I from becoming the greatest coach?

In Sanchez-Casal, a coach is not only the one who feeds drills, and corrects the player’s game. The coach is the tutor, the one with the power in his/her hands to develop the game of the player. A coach is a person who is responsible for a group of players, the one that creates a connection with those players that make them feel secure. When you watch tennis on TV don’t you see the player looking for the blithers after a point to make eye contact communication with his/her coach that nobody understands but them? That is the vital connection I am talking about. The coach has to know the player’s needs, he/she has to know when to push the player and when to engage with the right motivation.

If you google the 50 best tennis coaches of all times, what will show up is a list of ATP/WTA tennis coaches that are currently or recently retired from the circuit. In my honest opinion, these ratings are not the most accurate because who trained Andy Murray when he was 11, or Svetlana Kuznetsova when nobody believed she could make it to the top 10? I believe that the coaching profession is never fulfilled and that, with progress and dedication their job gets better. They will to want to keep learning from others, to keep rising, keep improving, and keep guiding, makes the coach become better each step of his/her career. Players are never alone, have you noticed the reactions of the coaches during those important points of the tournament? They have little heart attacks. If you are a coach, you will know what we are talking about. Coaches are bigger than tennis, they live for the sport, they are dedicated, they get emotional and their concentration is through the roof. The work behind a player’s game is the design of many repetitions, many hours of sweat, many moments of almost giving up, many successes, and many defeats.

Leadership builds a player; coaches are the leaders that players look to for guidance. Because players find the eye contact of the coach on the blithers when they lose the point but, also when they celebrate a victory. It is hard to be the greatest coach of all time but, what is stopping you from becoming it?

 

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Tatiana Batalla and Ivette Nieto
Marketing department of ASC Florida

ASC: MEETING POINT FOR OUR FORMER STUDENTS

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By Eva Pascual, Marketing department, Sánchez-Casal Academy.

At Sánchez-Casal Academy, we do love to welcome our former students. Many of them visit us, especially during summer, and come to enjoy what was their second home for a while. The academy becomes a meeting point for former colleagues, who now live far from each other, but who take advantage of their holiday to meet again on the court. They also visit us to train, to keep fit or to improve aspects of their game with their former coaches.

Marc Feliu and Diego Herrera, from Class of 2018, visited us this summer and shared their time and experiences with us. They both study at American universities and previously participated in our College Planning and Placement program. Diego studies Business and Marketing at Illinois State University, with a tennis scholarship, and Marc studies a Music Technology Program at Stevens Institute of Technology, with an academic scholarship.

We want to take this opportunity to share with you their thoughts and opinions on how Sánchez-Casal and ES International School shaped their current paths. Particularly for those young players who want to dedicate an important part of their lives to tennis but who, at the same time, often based on advice from their parents, do not want to give up their education.

Marc highlights, above all, the acquired ability to organize himself independently in his new and demanding university life thanks to the routines and habits he developed at the Academy. Making education and tennis compatible is not always easy, but he learned to do it at the Academy from a very young age, thanks to the support of coaches and teachers.

On his side, Diego is happy to have combined tennis with a good school and to have been able to decide whether to continue with university studies or take a professional path. Diego decided to follow the path of university education and is currently studying what he likes and, at the same time, competes at a very high level. He is also aware that no doors have been closed for him, since after university, if he wishes, he can return to the professional track.

At Sánchez-Casal and ES International School we feel proud when we hear these reflections from our former students. We identify ourselves with the values they express: discipline, tenacity, determination, among many others. Therefore, we wanted to share these videos with you, so that you too can listen to Diego and Marc reflect in their own words.

Thanks, Marc. Thanks, Diego. ASC/ESIS will always be your home!

Sanchez-Casal Anual Program

Eva Pascual
Marketing department, Sánchez-Casal Academy

COVID MADE OUR ASC FAMILY STRONGER (2nd Part)

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By Emilio Sánchez Vicario, Founder and CEO of Academia Sánchez-Casal

After 5 months of uncertainty, June of 2020 started with brightness. All of our academies were open, our main objective was to protect our community. To be able to guarantee the health and wellness of our big ASC family, we adapted our spaces, protocols, groups and we faced the summer with the motivation of welcoming our summer students.

It also came the moment to prepare our new scholar year, we tried to get ahead of what the future would hold and, we prepared to guarantee the safety of our student-athletes so they would be able to come back, enjoy and make the most profit of their classes and tennis training.

Like that, the new scholar year 2020-2021 starts with big challenges and we want to share with you, with a new video, how do we face them.

Lastly, we also want to thank everyone for your support during these past months. The pandemic situation showed us that in difficult situations our values make a difference: The effort, the solidarity, the discipline, the humbleness, the capacity to overcome. We are proud of all of our community and we feel that, after all these months, our ASC family became stronger than ever.

Sanchez-Casal Anual Program

Emilio Sánchez Vicario
Founder and CEO of Academia Sánchez-Casal

Covid made our ASC family stronger

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By Emilio Sánchez Vicario, Founder and CEO of Academia Sánchez-Casal

2020 is proving to be a strange, very strange year. What started as a new disease in a city in a small part of the world, ended up being a global pandemic. Little by little, we saw how countries were closing their borders, how citizens were staying at home. We also closed: first the academy in China, then one in Barcelona, and finally both in the USA.

Yes, that was all, and still is, very strange… but not everything has been negative. We have been living new situations since January, facing uncertainty, fighting against our fears. In short, we have had to face one of the most difficult matches. And we are still doing it.

It is October. It has been months since we opened our academies again and we are living in a new “normality”. I look back and reflect and see many things that make me be optimistic: I see effort, I see discipline, I see bonds of friendship that have been strengthened. I see that we have imposed ourselves to continue working, to adapt to the new situation, to reinvent ourselves, to rigorously fulfill the new needs, to watch over each other as members of the same family.

We have wanted to reflect some of the things that we went through together at Sánchez-Casal: players, coaches, teachers, parents, all together. Our feelings and reactions collected in two videos that we want to share with you. Today we present you the first of them.

However, we know that this game is not over yet. We do not know if we are in the first set, in the second… We don’t know if we will go to the Tie Break. But, we are here, playing point to point, like the tennis players we are. And we’re going to keep playing. Because life, like tennis, is like that.

Emilio Sánchez Vicario Founder and CEO of Academia Sánchez-Casal

Sanchez-Casal Anual Program