Spending A Gap Year Playing Tennis - The Right Choice For You?

By Author: Robert Deans
Total Articles: 246
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A gap year can be one of the most exciting times in a young persons life, so how you decide to spend your year of freedom may make all the difference to the fun you’ll have, plus the skills you’ll retain for the future.

The choices for filling a gap year are countless and range from teaching English as a second language to helping abandoned or ill treated animals. However, spending a gap year participating in sport is quickly becoming one of the most popular gap year options. They provide a great way to improve skills, get in shape, make new friends and gain independence in a new and fascinating country.

Once you've decided that a gap year will be the right choice for you, you could take the opportunity and travel to locations such as Australia or Argentina to enhance your own skill or help others improve their skills in the game . Along with the opportunity to start a fun filled career playing or teaching tennis, you’ll get sufficient time to explore a whole new country, while becoming familiar with new cultures and hopefully making new friends for life.

Typically a gap year ...
... tennis course can last between 6 weeks and 6 months dependant upon the individual goals, but this can be flexible. Choosing the spend 6 months abroad will not only be sufficient time for an individual to develop their skills but should also provide the opportunity to explore the country and those near by, possibly even do some paid work in preparation for university.

The organisers of such trips will arrange for time to be spent actively playing and learning more about the sport as well as provide opportunities to visit the local attractions. They should offer numerous social activities in addition to a good standard of mentor support for the duration of your stay.

If choosing to coach others in tennis, you should expect to earn a fair amount of money for your time, as well as being offered some training in improving and developing your coaching skills. While you would want to work enough hours to comfortably fund your leisure time, you should ideally not enrol on any gap year tennis programmes that will expect you to sacrifice too much of your time - you are here for the experience of a new country and culture just as much as you are here to improve your coaching skills.

Another factor to take into account is financing your excursion, if you are intending to go abroad to play tennis you will not be receiving an income so you will require sufficient funds available to make the most of the stay. Regardless of this, your time abroad should see you coming away with highly developed skills in addition to a host of personal attributes that would be valuable additions to any CV.

Don't be put off if you don't consider yourself a top notch tennis player, you simply need a passion for the game to apply for gap year tennis. You can find a variety of opportunities around catering for all abilities. All good organisers will make sure that you're matched to the right club for your requirements, whether you’re a casual player or even a budding professional.

This article was writte by R. Deans on behalf of Sport Lived , experts in gap year tennis programmes. For more info on gap year tennis programmes , please visit sportlived.co.uk.