Every August, the light over Potter Park starts to change. The afternoons still carry Sarasota heat, but the shadows stretch a little longer across the courts by six o’clock, and the kids who spent the summer in camp shorts show up in their school-year rhythm. Fall is my favorite season to coach here, and if you have a junior starting or returning this year, I want to give you an honest picture of what the season actually looks like on these courts.
I’m Michael Boothman. I’ve coached tennis for more than thirty years, most of it in Sarasota, and Potter Park is home base for our 10-and-under group program. It’s a public park — not a private club with a gate and a membership fee — and that’s a deliberate choice, not a compromise. Some of the best young players I’ve worked with learned the game a few feet from a picnic table, sharing court space with pickup doubles and a dad hitting with his daughter on the next court over. Fall is when that community feel comes back after the summer churn.
What the courts are actually like
Potter Park sits in a quiet residential pocket of Sarasota, and the tennis courts there are straightforward: hard courts, good lines, decent lighting for the early-evening sessions once daylight starts shrinking. Nothing fancy. That’s part of the point. A junior who learns to compete on a public court in a light crosswind, with a little surface wear and real distractions, builds a game that travels. The kid who only ever hits in pristine, climate-controlled silence often struggles the first time a match gets messy.
Our fall 10-and-under sessions run Monday through Thursday, 4:30 to 5:30 PM. That window matters. School lets out, kids get a snack and a breath, and then they get an hour of real tennis before dinner. An hour is enough when the hour is used well — and using it well is the whole job.
Live ball is the method
Here’s the single biggest thing that separates our fall sessions from a lot of what you’ll see around town: we spend the majority of court time in live ball. That’s one of the six pillars I coach by — Live Ball Is the Method — and it means real rallies against a moving, unpredictable ball, not long lines of kids waiting to hit one fed ball off a basket and shuffle to the back.
Basket feeding has its place for isolating a specific motion. But a ball that arrives the same way every time teaches a stroke that only works when the ball arrives the same way every time — which, in a match, is never. Real tennis is a problem-solving sport. The ball comes short, deep, wide, with spin, off the frame. A player who has spent hundreds of reps reading live balls and adjusting on the fly develops what motor-learning researchers call transferable skill: the ability to perform when conditions are variable and unrehearsed. That’s why our courts look busy and a little loud. Kids are rallying, missing, adjusting, and rallying again. That’s the work.
If you want to go deeper on how I structure sessions around this idea, I wrote more about the coaching approach on the coaching page.
The fall community rhythm
Summer camp is high-energy and a little chaotic — full days, lots of kids, lots of movement. Fall is different. The groups are capped at six players, the same faces show up week after week, and you start to see genuine development because a coach who sees the same kid on Monday and Wednesday can actually build on Monday’s work. Consistency is where growth lives.
You’ll also notice the community layer at Potter Park pick back up in the fall. Parents chat on the sideline benches. Older siblings hit on the next court. The USTA junior tournament calendar starts filling in across the region, and if your player is ready for it, fall is a natural time to try a first local event. The USTA has a helpful overview of how junior competition is structured by age and level at USTA junior tennis, and I’m always happy to talk through whether a particular tournament is the right fit for where your child is right now.
What I’d tell a parent starting this fall
Don’t over-plan it. A junior does not need five sessions a week, a private coach, and a tournament schedule in September. For most 10-and-unders, two well-run group sessions a week at Potter Park — real live-ball practice, small group, same coach — is plenty to build a foundation that lasts. What you’re looking for early isn’t a trophy. It’s a kid who wants to come back next week.
Watch for the small signals that the fall is working: your child talking about a point they figured out, asking to rally in the driveway, showing up a little more willing to compete. Those are worth more than a scoreboard in August.
If you’re near Potter Park and thinking about the fall season, come by during a session and watch for a few minutes. You’ll see what an hour of live-ball tennis actually looks like, and you can judge for yourself whether it’s the right home for your junior. You can reach me directly at 941-239-4703 or michael@srq.tennis.
See you on the court.
Coach Michael