Saidu Musa, a Chief Umpire with the Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF), on Monday urged the federation to develop sustainable programmes for the 20 players discovered at the just-concluded 18th National Sports Festival.
Musa told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the male and female players identified at the sports festival could form the vanguard of a new generation of tennis players in the country. “The young players, with good height advantage, who are neither in league or professional teams, displayed a high standard of skills at the festival. There is no doubt that if properly followed up, they can revive the country’s flagging fortunes in international tennis,’’ he said.
Musa, who is also a member of the NTF technical committee, also urged coaches to regularly acquaint themselves with current trends in the game. “If we must move forward at all, coaches must update their knowledge regularly because a lot of technical rules keep changing. Let them watch cassettes of international championships, read and study the do’s and don’ts of tennis because the more they do it, the better their future. Everything is not training; coaches need experience too and nobody buys experience, it is acquired,’’ he said.
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