Playing and teaching on the tennis courts of Posse Grounds Park in a white hat, white shorts, black sunglasses and a white beard, local pro Jeff Cooper is not hard to find.

Monday, Aug. 1, found him with Sedona Charter School students Chloe Howard, 11, and Gabby Graham, 10.

“They’re actually beating me in a game, at the moment,” Cooper said. “Chloe won a little round-robin mini-tournament this summer, and she won her other two regular singles matches with other girls — and a guy.”

“I won all my matches,” Howard agreed. “Except against you. I don’t think anybody got a point against you.”

“That’s not too unusual,” he replied.

Graham, like most of Cooper’s students, will return to the courts from her summer vacation in Minnesota after school Mondays and Wednesdays for fall lessons. Cooper is confident Howard will follow her.

“Because it’s fun,” she said. “Not that this usually happens, but it’s one of the only sports I can play that my legs don’t get tired. I play hockey, they get tired right away.

“And it’s awesome,” Graham added. “Jeff is the best tennis coach.”

A sentiment that 25 of Sedona’s and the Verde Valley’s other tennis players in training, from 5 to 15 years old, have come to share after over four years of the lessons, also known as Fit Kids Tennis.

“A whole bunch of kids, about 10, I had right in the very first session in the spring of 2012, I still have now,” he said. “I’ve had the average student for probably two years.”

Even one who came up to Posse Grounds about three years ago following her first three years of private lessons in Cottonwood, which Cooper, heading into his 25th year as a certified tennis pro, still gives to several adults as well as younger players.

“I still have new students,” he said. “But most of my students are getting to be pretty well-rounded players. Most everybody has a certain type of skill they’re pretty good at.”

Fundamentals like forehand and backhand ground strokes, serves and return of service, volleys and overhead approach shots are covered in the first part of each lesson.

“Then we do something more specialized,” Cooper said. “More advanced strokes, half volleys, drop shots, top spin lobs [and] slice ground strokes. Some of the kids are starting to learn slice and kick serves.”

Finally, in the last third or quarter of each lesson, Cooper introduces games like the lob game, tennis academy, volley cat, four square or one of 16 others in his repertoire — all of which his students will be introduced to in their age groups over each 24-lesson season.

“The lob game is a singles game that starts off with a lob [and] volley cat is like HORSE in basketball,” he said. “In four square, there’s a king or queen who serves the ball to the prince or princess in the diagonally opposite box of the court. The bottom box is the peasant. They’re hitting ground strokes, so the ball bounces before [they] hit it.

“The kids never seem to get tired of being in the prince or princess box and calling the king or queen dad and mom.”

Cooper’s kids are divided into age groups, with most at the beginner or intermediate skill level playing with other students no more than two years older or younger than them.

“Some younger kids are as good as the older kids,” he said. “I have some kids who are just incredible hitting very
delicate backspins.”

While the majority of Cooper’s students in Sedona, like Graham and Howard, are from the charter school, he also has a few from West Sedona and Big Park Community schools, he said.

Two first- through fourth-graders in the mix hail from a small, new Waldorf-inspired institution, Running River School — which currently hosts no more than 15 Sedona students, by Cooper’s estimation.

“We always mix things up a good amount,” he said. “In terms of backhands, the strokes we’re working on and their level of difficulty, we always keep those things heavily practiced, then introduce more difficult things.”

Three different skills and a game are typically covered in an hour, as Cooper has found that students improve faster when they have an enjoyable challenge to engage their skills.

In one such challenge, “Return of Serve Levels,” the student has to return two serves in a row to move up to the next level, starting with returning very soft serves until he or she is returning heavy sidespins, kicks and tough placements with lots of pace at the seventh and final level.

“We’re always doing some new things, but the essence of the program is extremely varied. By the time we get through a session, we’ve done so many different things, it’s not like there’s a lot of things we’re not covering.”

For more information about signing up for the fall session of Fit Kids Tennis, please see the Friday, Aug. 5, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.