Nov 11, 2008 by brian

Tennistips.net turns a student into a teacher!

Our #1 intern Jason seems to have his finger on the pulse of the blogosphere. He recently struck up a conversation with Mo Wehbi, the creator of Tennis Tips

People always ask me why did I decide to create www.tennistips.net?

Well, let me start from the very first time the idea crossed my mind. I was looking online for some tennis tips and all I could find were sites that wanted a subscription fee and your credit card for some information in return. I immediately thought that this fee process really sucks for tennis fans who want to learn something that should be for free. The idea came along when I was doing my Masters at Saginaw Valley State University; in order to graduate we were supposed to build our own website for our capstone project. I of course thought about tennis right away, since tennis is my passion. Designing a website that revolves around tennis was the perfect project for me to fulfill my passion.

I started playing tennis in late 2000 and this is when I fell in love with it. I didn’t have an instructor or take any lessons because they were just too expensive and I was only a college student at the time. In order for me to learn the game, I used to go online and try to search for some tips or just watch TV and try to learn from the Pros and imitate their tennis strokes. I believe that practice makes perfect so I kept playing the game and kept learning.

TennisTips.net is a website designed for both people that like to read and follow direction, and for the visual learner. There are step by step instructions on how to hit each tennis stroke as well as videos that demonstrate the right technique for each shot.

I shot as well as edited every single video on the site. My friend, Mike Major, who is the tennis coach for SVSU offered me his help in providing the right tennis terminology and the right choice of words. After all, we have to make sure that the site has credibility and what better trustworthiness than having a tennis coach proof read everything and enrich the content!

If anyone would like to be featured on the website showing their strokes please make sure to contact me and we can discuss it. Thanks and enjoy www.tennistips.net

Nov 03, 2008 by brian

Comeback Player Of The Half-Century

It seems like every week “Joe The Athlete” is accomplishing something astonishing. This week we heard the story of Ken Mink, the newest (and oldest) walk-on for the Roane State Raiders. Mink is 73 years young. In 1956, Mink was dismissed from the Lees Junior College team in Kentucky after being accused of vandalizing the coach’s office with shaving cream (Mink denies it!).

Mink revitalized his career after getting a hot hand in his driveway hoop. “I had been knocking down shot after shot, so when I came in the house I told my wife, ‘I’ve still got it,’

Mink runs the 40 in 6.6 seconds and his vertical leap is 20 inches. Coach Randy Nesbit claims that Mink has quickly learned the Raiders offense and may get playing time in blowouts.

Here’s a video of Mink in action!

Oct 22, 2008 by brian

Tiger the Caddy?

If beating Lebron in H-O-R-S-E isn’t the best an average joe can hope for than this is. 59-year-old John Abel won the “Tee Off with Tiger” sweepstakes and got the chance to see Tiger make his comeback as his very own caddy at Torrey Pines.

According to ESPN, Tiger wore a green caddy bib with Abel’s name and drove the cart. He handed clubs to Abel, then wiped them off with a towel and put them back in the bag. He squatted to line up putts and tended the pin. He warned how fast the greens were, then chuckled as Abel five-putted the 10th for a quadruple-bogey 8.

And wouldn’t ya know it, Woods is a pretty good caddy. Abel, from West Berlin, N.J., was advised by green speed, and gave him some tips for getting out of the sand.

Here’s the video from the AP…

Oct 07, 2008 by brian

Breakthroughbasketball.com: How to Learn Basketball Skills Faster

Jeff Haefner is the co-owner and founder of www.BreakthroughBasketball.com. Jeff and his brother Joe, decided to start BreakthroughBasketball.com simply because of their passion for the game. Their site offers free basketball tips, drills, strategies, and resources for coaches and players.

If you want to be good at basketball, you need to develop several skills, and developing these skills takes time. If you’re like most people, you want to make good use of your time. Here are some basketball tips to increase the effectiveness of your development intentions and efforts.

Idea #1 - Commit to a Definite Schedule.
You might think this is pretty obvious, but it means more than just dreaming about what you intend to do and more than depending on your changeable moods. You are taking the trouble to plan out in writing a definite schedule. You’re going to commit and follow through, even on days when you’re not that inspired. This forces you to be realistic, and it keeps you focused and on track.

Idea #2 - Get Great Advice and Effective Drills for Each Specific Skill.
Once you have made a time commitment, the next step is to plan what to do with the time. There is no shortage of dependable advice to help you in your efforts, and you should definitely take advantage of it. Take the trouble to find and study expert advice for each skill. You will find step-by-step guidance for building each skill. Getting great habits from the very start will definitely save you time in the long run. You will be able to find specific basketball drills for each skill, and you will be able to find great suggestions for scheduling your practice time.

Idea #3 - Practice with Intense Focus.
There is a big difference in what you can accomplish with concentration and focus compared to what you can accomplish just cruising. Your ability to sustain focused attention is perhaps the biggest factor in how quickly you will progress in your development, so you should approach your practices with a serious attitude. One way to help yourself develop effective focus and intensity is to chart your developmental progress and set some performance goals for yourself. In simple terms, push yourself to the next level.

Idea #4 - Get a Practice Buddy.
There are direct and indirect advantages of basketball tip. First of all, many drills work better if you have a defender or teammate involved. For instances, passing drills clearly work better if you have a human target, dribbling against a defender speeds development, defending a real player clearly helps with defensive skills, and having a partner for basketball shooting drills allows you to get more shots in instead of chasing rebounds. Second, having a partner reinforces your commitment. If you are feeling a little lazy, your partner can get you back into a productive frame of mind.

Idea #5 - Watch Great Players.
You will gain from studying how great players perform. If you have access to the internet, you can find lots of footage showing players who have outstanding fundamentals, and it will do you good to see how effective you can be if you have great skills. Of course, this won’t replace your actual practice, but it will reinforce it and inspire you. One thing that you will probably notice is that skills can be developed to higher and higher levels.

Idea #6 - Increase Your Time Commitment.
All other factors equal, the more time you spend working on your skills, the faster you will progress. If you are interested in making faster progress, then simply spend more quality time working on your skills. Keep in mind that you need to build up your commitment steadily so that you don’t suddenly double your commitment and then burn out quickly, and you need to balance this commitment with your other responsibilities in life. Whatever you do, try to do it with enthusiasm and with the idea that progress has stages and is long term.

Idea #7 - Keep a Positive Focus.
Working on basketball skills requires that you go through some awkward stages. Learning to dribble with your off-hand is just one example. You feel clumsy and make plenty of mistakes before you get decent off-hand skills. You should certainly be prepared for these awkward stages and take them in stride. If you get down on yourself and moan and groan, you will prolong your agony. It’s normal, so deal with it cheerfully and keep working with positive focus. That’s the fastest way to mastery!

Developing your basketball skills can be a very rewarding experience and can open up great opportunities for you to be successful on teams in various settings. The better your skills, the more effective you can be whenever and wherever you play. If you would like to see some great information and get free basketball tips then be sure to visit Top Tips.

Sep 22, 2008 by brian

LeBron L-O-S-E-S To Random Guy

A few weeks ago LeBron James went down to the park to play some hoops and he got smoked. It wasn’t at the hands of Kobe, T-Mac or any other professional basketball player. Rather, James lost two straight games of H-O-R-S-E to a balding, 29 year old warehouse worker from La Habra, California named David Kalb.

The contest was the culmination of a very cool promotion by Cub Cadet (the makers of premium lawn equipment of all things) called LeBron’s Trick Shot Challenge. Contestants could upload their best trick shots and the winner (selected by LeBron) would get to play LeBron in a game of H-O-R-S-E at Venice Beach. Kalb winning video highlight involved putting a basketball hoop on a forklift and spinning it around, while attempting to bounce a ball off the wall and into the hoop.

The only problem with the promotion is that it really wasn’t much of a contest! Kalb used a dizzying variety of shots from behind the basket, around and through the basket. After schooling LeBron, Kalb said “I never specifically practiced any shots to use against him. I play ‘H-O-R-S-E’ a lot with my roommates so I just used the same shots we’ve been doing for years.”

Here’s a video of the match and a solid feature story on the event.

Best of all, it appears that Kalb is a rec sports superstar. Check out his rec teams and line of t-shirts.