Earlier in 2024, Tennis Canada launched a new five-year strategic plan to reaffirm its ambitions for the growth and development of Canadian tennis and establish a roadmap that will enable the federation to achieve its objectives and ensure lasting success at our sport.

As part of the plan, a slight change was made to the “Vision” of the organization. What was previously “becoming a world leading tennis nation” has been updated to “becoming a world leading tennis nation”. On the surface, this small update may seem minor or superfluous, but it represents a marked change in the achievements and aspirations of the federation over the past decade and into the future.

With her first Grand Slam singles finalists (Eugénie Bouchard, Wimbledon 2014 and Milos Raonic, Wimbledon 2016), champion (Bianca Andreescu, US Open 2019), women’s doubles champion (Gabriela Dabrowski, US Open 2023) and a Cup title Davis (2022) under its belt, Canada can lay claim to being the world’s leading tennis nation. The next challenge: staying there.

This ambitious task falls to everyone at Tennis Canada, including its high performance team. Part of their plan to keep Canada at the top of the sport is a revamped U15 program that was soft-launched last year before being fully rolled out in 2024. The Canadian U15 hopefuls team is designed to help track, monitor, support and develop promising young talents. tennis players aged 10 to 14. The program will help players move to their next stage of development by giving them better resources to participate in international competitions, organizing national camps to attend, providing consistent aftercare and support services for players.

“The Canadian U15 Prospects Team is one of the first building blocks for developing our country’s future tennis stars,” said Jocelyn Robichaud, Head of U15 Development at Tennis Canada. “This is a vital part of our high performance development journey, and I am very excited that this year’s new cohort will be embarking on the national camps in Toronto and Montreal. »

Prospective team members will be invited to 2-3 national camps over a 12-month period, with all expenses covered by Tennis Canada. To kick off the new cohort of guests, the first national camps will take place in October: first, the girls’ camp will take place from October 2 to 5 at Sobeys Stadium in Toronto, then the boys’ camp, from October 10. -13 at IGA Stadium in Montreal.

The three primary goals of National Camps are to foster a high-performance, team environment, evaluate and analyze key performance indicators to set individualized goals, and provide participants with science support and education sports and sports medicine.

In addition to on-court drills, practices and matches led by Tennis Canada national coaches, these camps also include additional off-court sessions to help players understand the importance of characteristics and habits needed on court and off the field to help them achieve their goal. maximum potential not only as a tennis player but also as a person.

A total of 29 girls and 36 boys have been invited to this year’s Canadian U15 Prospects team and will take part in the camps. In total, there are four players from Alberta, 11 from British Columbia, two from Nova Scotia, 18 from Ontario, 30 from Quebec and one from Saskatoon:

More information on the Canadian U15 Prospects team can be found here.