Teaching Tennis is a Good Start

“In Texas, M--- High School junior and Girl Scout Ambassador Katy B---- held a camp to teach elementary school children tennis to earn the GS of S--- Council Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can achieve.” from the GSUSA blog, quoting a local reporter.

This was posted a couple months ago, in one of those daily blog blasts from GSUSA.  And I remember thinking, “That’s a GOLD project?  How lame!”  But then GSLE Specialist Lesley Finch said, “but you don’t know what else she did!”  And that hatched an idea to hypothesize on what really went on to make this a full and robust Gold Award Project.

I wonder if Katy is a great HS tennis player?  And I wonder if she is really committed to healthy living?  If so, perhaps the root issue she identified was around kids being too sedentary, not getting up off the couch and away from the TV/computer enough.  So she wanted to give the kids a fun athletic experience that they could continue to draw on during their lives?

That would have been a good start!  And then she could have enlisted the help not only of her school teammates, but of other players in her club/region to help provide her program.  Katy could have done some community mapping to see if tennis was available to all kids?  And perhaps sleuthed out an under-served population of kids who could benefit from the exposure.

She would have had to use her leadership to gather the volunteers together with the tennis court property, create a curriculum to teach, and figure out a way that her project could go on after she was finished.  That sustainability piece might be picked up by her club, the tennis facility or another entity, but Katy would be the one to put it altogether for someone else to use.

Besides teaching the basic skills and tennis rules, Katy could have enhanced her project with flyers about healthy living and examples of easy to do exercises for the kids to take home.  The kids could share it with older siblings, parents and neighbors, which would be great, and positively impact other people as well.

Maybe Katy set this up this program for everyone to attend?  And there were other vendors/info booths about healthy living and diet.  Perhaps even a piece on how to warm up before playing a sport?  What to do if you are injured.  How can you be healthy and play safely.   So the kids AND the adults had take-away information to help them both.

I’m hoping that Katy also celebrated the completion of her project!  That she could see that the work she did created positive results not only in the population she served, but for her team as well. 

Now THAT would have been one heckuva Gold Award Project!