When Sashka is out of tournaments, we do not have a lot of “hot news” to write about. Nevertheless, our life is going on.
Read further if you want to know (a little bit more) about Sashka’s daily tennis routine these days.
TENNIS
Every single day Sashka has 4-5 hours of tennis practices. As her coach, I am paying a lot of attention to improve her serves, spins & tactical discipline.
Now we mostly work with Lobster tennis ball machine bought as a result of Sashka’s crowdfunding campaign. Two times a week, she also has a “club training” with other players of our tennis club. Not too much, but at least it is something.
We can’t afford to invite a full-time sparring partner as it is expensive. But we usually can arrange joint practices with good male & female junior players so it is more-less OK with finding a training partner for Sashka. Besides, on weekends she plays small local tournaments or “control matches”.
#TEAMSASHKA
Our friends from #TeamSashka around the world continue to inspire & support us – thank you all!
During our last trip (ITF Juniors Grade 2 in Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy) we spent a beautiful evening in Milan with Mike, Cristina and their cutie-kids. In Santa Croce sull’Arno, where Sashka is going to play her next ITF Juniors tournament in a couple of days, Stefano, another #TeamSashka fellow member, is waiting for us.
To say big “thank you!” one more time, we resently sent out some small souvenirs from Sashka & team to our most devoted supporters: #TeamSashka t-shirts, hoodies, caps, tennis-themed keychains etc.
We have a couple of extra t-shirts, so within next few days we will probably make a kind of giveaway or lottery so more #TeamSashka friends can get this cool stuff! 🙂
FINANCE: NEW CROWDFUNDING… AFTER ENTERING TOP-150 ONLY!
Sashka’s parents work hard to cover her basic tennis needs. Their financial situation is not such a disaster like it was in the beginning of the year, though it is still challenging.
Nevertheless, the whole team (and Sashka as the main part of it) made one important decision: we won’t try to launch a new crowdfunding campaign till Sashka enters ITF Juniors Top-150 ranking list.
We all think it should be a tennis story. Sashka got an initial support from tennis community – and now we should pay it back, in form of achieving a targeted level of results – in Sashka’s case, Top-150 which basically equals to entering quali draw of almost all Junior Grand Slams.
At the same time, our current tennis budget is definitely not enough for sustainable development of our player. It is not “the end of the world”, but we NEED to earn more money ourselves to help Sashka – unfortunately, sponsorship is not the case for Sashka’s case as nobody wants to sponsor a refugee (“bad marketing investment, refugees usually do not play tennis”).
So in the nearest future Sashka & her team will start several small independent micro-commerce projects. We will probably open a kind of web shop on this blog, launch a Kickstarter product campaign. If you have any ideas what else we can do, please contact us.
As always, we hope to have your support, #TeamSashka!