Interesting Junior or “Keiki” Development by Punahou’s Lee Couillard
Interesting Junior or "Keiki" Development by Punahou's Lee CouillardLee Couillard is a major part of Punahou School’s junior development program. As part of the USPTA he travels and attends many conferences and discussions about the potential growth of our sport and how to enhance it. I visited with him and learned about an incredible product he made that may revolutionize the way children learn and pick up the game.
He calls it the Keiki 65, Keiki refers to the Hawaiian word of child or baby. It is a miniature tennis racket weighing in at 6.5 ounces. What differentiates this racket from other junior frames is that it is not one of those metal throw-arounds with a disproportionate head and no actual feel. It is an ideal tennis racket, modeled after adult frames with similar weight displacement, for childreon! It’s roughly 23 inches long, thus anyone under the age of 10 can wield it and get a sense of a the way a true racket would feel in their hands.
What makes this product more remarkable is in the results. When you give a child one of those namebrand $20 rackets and then go pay for a $60 lesson, how can you justify that investment, and how does the child really get a sense for the game with a racket that would be the equivalent of us (as adults) picking up a 150sq inch head and be told to “feel the ball off the strings” and “swing through the ball”. If we were all beginners, we’d be hitting balls over the fence or never needing a follow through! So this is a revolutionary idea that can change the way children can learn decent form and develop their strokes with proper feel of a racket in their hands.
Ask any great tennis player if they grew up with one of those short racketball-like tennis rackets and they’ll tell you “No” – They grew up trying to swing around a light adult frame. Makes sense doesn’t it? Now children can have the same feelings we as adults have swinging our adult frames but in a child-sized version. The grip is small and the children surprisingly develop natural strokes a lot faster and smoother than if they’re using those oversized trampoline junior rackets. All those racketball-esque tennis rackets do is create an easy way for a coach to stand there, hand feed a ball to the child, and have them “high-five” the ball with their racket, calling it a “volley”. How many high-five volleys do you see Fed or Rafa hitting? It’s complete nonsense to try teach a child tennis using equipment and strokes they’ll NEVER use. Same with the serve, children who learn to high-five their serves end up developing improper serve motions (I’ve seen this first hand with some children I worked with this past summer). The even balance and weight distribution throughout the Keiki 65 allows the junior to actually develop a sense of where the racket head is, how to contact the ball in the middle of the strings, and create strokes of their own that don’t hamper their future development. All this in a true graphite frame to create the feelings and sensations of a true racket make for a perfect junior racket.
Anyway, Lee had these frames made in China and they are available on eBay under the phrase Keiki 65 Junior High Performance tennis racket. Please check it out and try it with your kids! You might have a Federer or Henin on your hands, all they need is a REAL racket in their hands and not one of those extra large trampolines with a grip attached to it!
Shubert
Topics: Keike, Thomas Shubert
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