Every year around late July I get the same question from parents: “Once school starts, how does my kid keep playing?” It’s a fair worry. Summer in Sarasota is easy—long days, camps, open court time. Then August hits, the school calendar takes over, and the two-hour afternoon window you had shrinks to maybe 45 minutes between the bus and dinner. I’m Michael Boothman, I’ve coached juniors in this town for 30-plus years, and I’ve watched a lot of good summer momentum quietly evaporate in September. It doesn’t have to.
The good news is that Sarasota is a genuinely good place to play tennis year-round. The weather cooperates, the public courts are solid, and there’s real competition within a short drive. The trick is planning the fall before the fall plans you. Here’s how I think about it.
Where to play once summer camp ends
Sarasota’s public parks carry most of our junior tennis, and they stay busy into the fall. Potter Park is where our 10-and-under group trains, and its courts are in good shape and easy to book after school. Pineview hosts our older youth development sessions in the evenings, which works well once families are back on a school-night rhythm—6:00 to 7:30 doesn’t collide with homework the way a mid-afternoon slot does.
If you’re farther east, Lakewood Ranch has grown into a real tennis pocket with plenty of court access, and families out that way often don’t realize how much is available close to home. Siesta Key and the courts near downtown round out the options. My point isn’t that you need a fancy club—we’ve built our whole program on the idea that community public courts are enough. What matters more than the venue is that your player gets on a court consistently, two or three times a week, hitting live balls against another human being.
That last part matters. One of our core coaching ideas is that Live Ball Is the Method—real rallies against a real opponent, not a bucket of fed balls and not a ball machine running the same feed on a loop. A machine has its place for grooving a specific pattern, but skill that holds up in a match is built by reading a ball off another player’s racquet and responding. Fall is when that live-ball work pays off, because fall is when the matches start.
Fall is competition season, and that’s a feature
Summer around here is mostly development and camps. Fall shifts toward competition, and I think that’s healthy for a junior who’s ready for it. The USTA junior tournament calendar picks back up, and there are age-appropriate events—from beginner-friendly formats all the way up—within reasonable driving distance. If you’ve never navigated it, the USTA junior tennis pathway is a good place to start; it lays out the levels and how a new player enters without getting thrown to the wolves.
I’d offer one piece of advice about that first tournament, though: don’t wait until your kid is “ready” to enter one. There’s no such thing. Entering a low-level event is part of getting ready. This connects to a pillar I lean on constantly—Accuracy Inside Representative Conditions. You don’t build a match-ready forehand by hitting flawless balls in a calm practice. You build it by hitting a good-enough ball while your heart is pounding, the score matters, and someone across the net is trying to make you miss. A player who can put 8 out of 10 forehands to a target in a live drill is closer to competition-ready than one who hits 10 out of 10 off a cooperative feed but has never felt the pressure. A first tournament, even a small one, is the most representative condition there is.
So if your player had a good summer, a low-stakes fall event is a great way to cash in that progress. Lose in the first round? Fine. Now you know exactly what to work on through the winter, which is worth more than a trophy from an event that was too easy.
Keeping the habit alive when the calendar gets full
Here’s the real challenge of fall: time. In summer you had abundance. In fall you’re rationing. A few things that help the families I work with:
Protect two touch-points a week, even short ones. Consistency beats duration. A 45-minute focused hit twice a week keeps a skill alive far better than one big Saturday session with five dead days on either side. Kids’ motor skills fade with long gaps, so the every-few-days rhythm is doing quiet work even when the sessions feel short.
Use the school-night evening slot. This is exactly why our Pineview youth development runs 6:00 to 7:30 on Monday and Wednesday—it fits around the school day instead of fighting it. If you can build the fall around one or two anchored evenings, everything else gets easier to plan.
Keep a hitting partner in the mix. A same-age friend your player can rally with on an off day is worth a lot. It keeps the live-ball reps going between coached sessions and, honestly, keeps the sport fun—which is the thing that actually keeps a 12-year-old coming back.
Don’t over-schedule. Fall sports, band, homework—it stacks up fast. Two or three tennis touch-points, done consistently, will develop a junior player just fine. You don’t need to be at the courts five days a week to make real progress. A player who loves the game and shows up regularly beats a burned-out one who was dragged there every afternoon.
The bigger picture
The families who navigate fall well are the ones who decide in July what the fall will look like—which courts, which nights, which first tournament—rather than letting the school year happen to them. Sarasota gives you the raw materials: good public courts, a real competitive calendar, and enough year-round weather that there’s no true off-season. If you want a hand mapping out your player’s fall, that’s a big part of what our coaching program is built to do, and you can always reach me directly at michael@srq.tennis or 941-239-4703.
The summer gains are real. Fall is where you find out what they were worth—and where the next round of them gets built.
See you on the court!
Coach Michael