Harvest Tennis Academy in Ludhiana nurturing young talent

LUDHIANA - Rural youth has a lot of potential especially in sports that is as yet to be tapped. Harvest Tennis Academy at Jassowal, near Ludhiana is nurturing young talent by providing them world-class facilities and infrastructure.

Founded in 2005 by Harwinder Singh Saran, a Canada-based NRI, Harvest Tennis Academy has fast emerged as the premier tennis-training center in the country.

It has 14 fully flood lit courts, a gym, swimming pool and an international school based on Cambridge International Examinations curriculum.

To popularise Tennis among children, the Academy recently organized the Harvest Open All India Under-10 Tennis Tournament-2009.

A total of 88 children participated from Punjab and other states like Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir.

The academy follows a very comprehensive approach to tennis with a full complement of coaches, fitness trainers and physiotherapists.

“As far as the village children are concerned, the word is natural talent. Lot of the village children possess untapped resources but providing some facilities and advanced coaching methods, we are seeing good results. One of our students has reached the level of number five in India and she has achieved that within a three-year period,” said Todd Clark, chief coach, Harvest Tennis Academy.

Rimpledeep Kaur of village Jassowal ranked India no 5 and no. 7 in Asia in under-14 category.

A trainee at Harvest Tennis Academy, Rimpledeep is determined to improve her rank further and bring laurels to the country.

“Tennis is international sport. It is gaining huge popularity in India too. Youngsters love to play it because it is an individual game and is interesting. Kids in villages also love this sport,” she said.

The academy has given tennis scholarships to those boys and girls who performed well in the Under-10 tournament.

“Those days are gone when you could just function under once coach. Now the training is multidimensional. There is a mind aspect, physical aspect. There are several other aspects, which have to be watched in a player, so we have tried to look at all these aspects and now we provide comprehensive training to the student. We also added an international school because we get international students,” said Hardeepak Saran, Director, Harvest Campus.

The desire to do well is no less than that of children in the cities and they have taken very well to the sport. By Karan Kapoor (ANI)