How Did it Begin?

It started off as a simple assignment to take pictures and interview people that related to our question, but what was the question? I decided to stick to a subject that I enjoy personally, sports, but to be more specific, tennis. What are different elements of tennis? The racket, the ball, the court, and the player. What types of players are there, aggresive, defsensive, neutrual, etc, but the main types of players are the proffesional players and the casual players.

 

"What causes the separtion between a casual and a proffesional tennis player?"

 

Now that I had my question, I went off and interviewed multiple people, three coaches to be exact.

There was the casual player, Frank Smyth, there was the former pro who quit, John Sevali, and there was the retired pro, Sandy Major. They all ended up at reletivly the same place (coaching) and all began learning tennis years before that, but what caused them to have such different positions during their tennis careers, what caused them to become either a pro or a casual player.

 

Although they all had really different lifes, they all had special expireinces that made them who they are today, and caused them to be as involved in tennis as they were and are today.

 

~ Coach Frank Symth ~

Current Location - Mountain View High School

 

 

Coach Frank began teaching around 1996 at Blach middle school. There he taught both the boy's and girl's basket ball team as well as the boy's and girl's volly ball team. Around the year 2000, he saw an ad in the news paper for a needed coach at Mountain View high school and after waiting for a few weeks, seeing that it still asn't taken, he decided to give it a go. He's been coaching at Moutain View High ever since.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Coach John Sevali ~

Current Location - Cuesta Park

 

 

As a former pro, Coach John Sevali knows what it's like to be a proffestional, although for hat ever reason he cuit the pro circuit before he got very far. After he quit, Coach John began teaching tennis at Cuesta Park and has been for well over 10 years, teaching what he knows to all ages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Coach Sandy Mayor ~

Current Location - Private

 

 

As a person who has been playing tennis pretty much since he was three years old, Coach Sandy definetly knows his way around tennis. He grew up knowing he would coach tennis one day, just like his old man, and played conistantly. After he retried from the pro circuit he began his teaching career, as well as a few senior tournaments here and there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Causes a Tennis Player to be Good?

 

To view my slide show, view the below box

 

 

If you wish to see a written transcript of my slide show click the link shown below. It will open up a pdf file with text as well as pictures.

 

Slide Show Transcript

 

 

 

This projected seemed like it would be a breeze when I first started it, I mean, how hard could getting a few pictures and some audio be? Sure enough I was saddly mistaken. It took about 3 weeks to get all the interviews finsihed to to techincal problems with the recording device, noisy surroundings, and the need to reschedual meetings constantly.

 

Once all those materials were collected, it was time to put it together. "Just puting it together, too easy." I should have been expecting the vast amount of work that still needed to be done, the majority of the project in fact. Using Adobe Flash to create a "slide shower viewer" by scatch was no walk in the park. Code after code after code after code, just to finish one button of four. Of course there was more then just buttons that need to be made, but I'd rather not bring back painful memories.

 

After that we had to edit all our audio, which includes equalizing it, cutting it up, and nasicly editting it in anyways that could possible make it better. In order to do so, we imported all of our audio into an application called Pro Tools LE. Once again, tons of time put into editting the audio for a 5 minute slide show.

 

As paInful as all the code and editting was, I am pleased with the ending result, atleast to some extent. I hope you enjoyed watching it, if you already have that is.