Hello everyone,
Time flies and it has already been six years since we inaugurated the Academy. I can now say that it has become my second home and my sporting base. It is the place I spend the most time at and where I train and prepare for tournaments. I would like to see project after project flourish there.
Throughout my tennis career I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by exceptional people and first-class professionals. All of them have had a role in the Academy, something that has helped make the methodology we have worked on for more than a decade easy to apply and implement, thanks to a teaching system that is used today to educate and train these young players.
I am immensely proud of the work carried out by our coaches, physical trainers and academic teachers. But I am also excited to see the hard work of each and every person that makes the Academy a reality: from the cleaning and services personnel to management, maintenance, etc. All of them look after the small details in search of perfection in their daily work, providing a real-life example of the values we want to instil in the players. It is these values that make this Academy a very special place.
Thanks to a methodology that has been designed over many years, during their stay here, the players can combine their tennis training with academic studies in the American school that forms part of the Academy. For us, human training is equally as important as sports coaching and therefore our goal is for each player to be capable of putting values such as hard work, humility, tolerance, patience, respect, discipline and commitment into practice.
Thus, on a daily basis at the Academy, all the players attend the course we have called “Building a Champion”, where every day of the week they are taught practical lessons from a special, tennis-based syllabus in which an emphasis is placed on values, psychology, nutrition and physical training. I was lucky enough to learn about many of these things at an early age in my family, but others (nutrition for example) I have learned with the passing of time. That is why our goal is for these young players to leave the Academy with comprehensive and integral human training.
I am aware of how difficult it is to make the leap into the professional ranks, but all the students that work hard and give their all will leave the Academy with first-rate academic and tennis training, which will give them the chance of attending a US university through scholarships that will allow them to continue playing tennis while studying a degree.
Looking back over these years, I am also immensely proud that other projects, into which we have poured a lot of love and dedication, have been able to flourish at the Academy. A clear example of this is the synergy created with the Foundation, with which, through sport, we help underprivileged children and those at the risk of social exclusion, instilling values in them so that they can enjoy real opportunities in the future. It has been special to see the progress of the “More than Tennis” events, where young people with intellectual impairments from all over Spain have worked on physical, coordination, emotional and social improvement through tennis. The project is currently run in 19 tennis schools in various parts of Spain and I would invite you all to find out more about it. I believe it will move you as much as it has me.
Another example of collaboration between the Foundation and the Academy is the staging of the Rafa Nadal Tour by Mapfre Masters. On this tour, in which over 1500 under-12 and under-15 players compete, we try to promote the values of sport. In each heat, thanks to the work of the Foundation, activities are run in which players win points in a "value ranking" that to me is equally or more important than the tennis ranking.
I would also like to reiterate my thanks to the hundreds of families who have put their trust in the academy throughout these years. If there is one thing that makes me happy, it is receiving so many affectionate letters to tell us that their children feel like a part of our family, because it reassures us that we are doing things in the right way. I hope this great family continues to grow every day.
