Every so often a parent asks me some version of the same question: how many champions have you produced? It’s a fair thing to want to know. But after more than thirty years of coaching in Sarasota, I’ve come to measure my work by a different scoreboard — one that doesn’t show up on a tournament draw sheet.
I’m Michael Boothman, a USPTA Elite Professional and the founder of SRQ Tennis. I run junior programs on public courts around Sarasota, from Potter Park to Pineview, and I still teach private lessons most weeks. The players I think about most aren’t the ones who won a 12-and-under bracket. They’re the ones who are still playing at 25, at 40, at 60. That’s the real scoreboard, and it’s the one I’d rather be judged on.
Trophies fade, habits last
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about junior tennis: the kid who wins the most at ten years old is not reliably the kid who’s playing at thirty. Early winners are often just early developers — bigger, faster, or more coordinated a little sooner than their peers. That advantage tends to even out. Meanwhile, plenty of players who lost early matches quietly built the thing that actually matters: a relationship with the game that outlasts the results.
I’ve watched both stories play out over three decades. The junior who burned bright and quit at fourteen. The steady kid who never made headlines and now plays USTA league tennis with his own kids in the car. If I coach only for the trophy, I optimize for the wrong outcome. I’d be trading a lifetime of tennis for a plastic cup and a photo.
So I try to keep the long view in front of me. Not “how do we win Saturday,” but “how do we build a player who wants to be on a court twenty years from now.”
Confidence Is Built, Not Given
This long view is exactly why one of the Six Pillars I coach by is Confidence Is Built, Not Given. Empty praise doesn’t create a lifelong player. Evidence does. When a junior can see, in real numbers, that they hit eight out of ten forehands to a target under live pressure this month when they hit five last month, that’s a fact they own. Nobody handed it to them. They earned it, and they can point to it.
That kind of earned confidence is durable in a way that a coach’s cheerleading never is. A kid who has been told they’re great their whole life gets rattled the first time reality disagrees. A kid who has watched their own numbers climb has something to stand on when a match goes sideways. Years later, that’s often the difference between the adult who still plays and the one who walked away the first time the game got hard.
It also changes how losing feels. If your self-worth is riding on the result, a loss is a verdict. If you’re tracking your own development, a loss is just data — information about what to work on Tuesday. Players who learn that early tend to stick around, because the game stops being a referendum on whether they’re good enough and starts being something they get to keep improving at.
Why I still coach on public courts
People sometimes assume a coach with thirty years in should be tucked away at a private club by now. I made the opposite choice on purpose. SRQ Tennis runs on Sarasota’s public parks because that’s where the widest range of kids can actually reach the game — not just the families who can afford a club initiation fee. If I care about how many people are still playing at forty, I have to care about how many people get a real shot at falling in love with it at ten.
Small groups make that possible. We cap groups at six players, which is non-negotiable, because a kid who stands in a line of twenty waiting for a turn isn’t developing — they’re spectating. Six players means real repetitions, real feedback, and enough live ball that the game feels like the game. That’s the environment that produces players who want to come back, which is the whole point.
The patience the job requires
None of this is fast. Development on this timeline asks for patience from everyone — the coach, the parent, and the player. There will be months where a junior’s tournament results look flat while, underneath, their movement or their contact point is quietly getting more reliable. The research on skill acquisition backs this up: durable learning often looks slower in the short term and pays off later, a pattern motor-learning researchers describe when they study how practice conditions affect long-term retention. The USTA’s coaching resources lean on the same evidence-based principles that shape how I run a session.
I remind parents of this because the pressure to see instant results is real, and it’s the fastest way to burn a kid out. The families who trust the process — who let a ten-year-old be a developing ten-year-old — are usually the ones whose kids are still playing years later. That patience isn’t passive. It’s a bet on the long scoreboard.
What I hope they keep
If I’ve done my job, a player leaves my program with more than a forehand. They leave knowing how to practice, how to lose without falling apart, and how to look at their own game honestly and get to work. Those aren’t just tennis skills. They’re the reason someone is still lacing up at forty, teaching their own kid to keep their eye on the contact point.
That’s the coaching life I signed up for. Not a wall of trophies — a community of people who never stopped playing. If you want to know more about how I think about all of this, the about page lays out the background, and I’m always reachable at 941-239-4703 or michael@srq.tennis.
Thirty years in, the real scoreboard still reads the same way it always has: how many of them are still out there, on a court somewhere in Sarasota, because tennis became something they get to keep.
— Michael Boothman