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Junior Programs
Slate has the most comprehensive developmental program for juniors on the planet. Hands down.
How we structure the junior STAGE program is based on the Long Term Athlete Development model.
This ensures your child will learn in an appropriate learning environment, acquiring skills faster and funner.
No matter the age and stage, no matter their goals, junior STAGE will have a program and pathway for your child to make them players for life.
Junior membership is required and is only $35/month.
Please note that the December 2 start date for the Winter Season is subject to change.
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Pathways
"Player For Life" and "Excellence". There is a place for everyone.
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Classes
Divided by age and stage. 3-18 years old.
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Sub-Programs
Showing a clear path of progression for every student.
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Methodology
Our team works together to bring the best product to your child.
Junior STAGE Overview
Understand junior STAGE’s key differentiators.
Long Term Athlete Development
Junior STAGE solutions
Ratios and Costs
Classes Offered
Long Term Athlete Development
Slate’s junior STAGE program’s purpose is to grow the game of pickleball for children, creating players for life, as well as having a robust enough program to be able to develop professional-level players from scratch.
Slate’s junior STAGE program is based on the Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model authored by Istvan Balyi, Richard Way, and Colin Higgs.
LTAD is the ultimate sport developmental framework, composed of seven stages which guides how training and competition should be conducted over a person’s lifetime, starting from birth through the entirety of adult life. Its purpose is to improve programming across all sports so that every athlete can live up to their full potential.
Slate has taken this framework and adapted it for pickleball, combining newly updated racquet-coaching methodologies with LTAD. A challenge for the sport world is having programming for children that is both age and stage appropriate. As seen in tennis coaching, the previous ideas were to teach technique to young children first, where children would be hitting thousands upon thousands of shots to build muscle memory. Eventually, they would be sent out to matches, with the hopes that they would “figure it out” as they compete with the techniques that they were given.
Junior STAGE solutions
There are many issues with this old-school mindset that are corrected by Slate’s junior STAGE program. For the first 8-9 years of life, it is critical to emphasize building the fundamental movement skills before focusing primarily onto pickleball-specific skills, as young children don’t have the athletic base to have fun and experience success learning techniques that incorporate both gross and fine motor skills. Once the foundation of physical literacy is in place, children can acquire sports-specific skills much easier and in a much more enjoyable way, which is critical for retention.
Another major issue is that programs often do not take into account the difference in the needs of boys versus girls, and their windows of optimal trainability. Junior STAGE builds these directly into the program. An example would be stamina (endurance and aerobic power), which has its optimal window of trainability at the onset of the adolescent growth spurt, which is often a year earlier for girls than boys.
A third issue is that programs often leave non high performance children behind. Junior STAGE has two pathways instead of just the performance path. They are the “excellence” path, and the “player for life” path. This ensures that any child at any age will be able to jump into Slate’s program and experience the ideal learning environment, no matter how much experience they’ve previously had with the sport.
Ratios and Costs
Our ratio for all of the junior STAGE program is 4 players to 1 coach to 1 court. This provides a solid group experience, where children can experience live-ball in a more realistic setting and make new friends, but allows the children to receive adequate attention and feedback from the coach. To add another coach and court, a minimum of seven enrollments is required.
The rate is for non high performance $29/hour and requires a junior membership which is either $15 a day, or $35/month. Our High Performance program, part of our “excellence” pathway, which includes the Prodigy 1, 2, and Ultra 1, 2 classes, has a rate of $34/hour, due to the increased off-court individualization and periodization work our coaches will complete to ensure proper development, as the needs for children in this stage are higher.
Classes Offered
The list of Slate’s STAGE classes is organized by title of class, age range, Level assessment required to pass to the next level, length of class, and LTAD Stage. The High Performance program is represented by (HP).
- Pioneer 1: 3-4 year old beginners | 40 minutes | Active Start
- Pioneer 2: 5-6 year old beginners | 50 minutes | Active Start
- Foundations 1: 6-9 year old beginners | 60 minutes | FUNdamentals
- Foundations 2: 8-12 year old beginners (Level 2) | 90 minutes | Learn to Train
- Foundations 3: 12-18 year old beginners (Level 2) | 90 minutes | Active for Life
- Enhanced 1: 7-9 year old intermediates (Level 1)| 60 minutes | FUNdamentals
- Enhanced 2: 8-12 year old intermediates (Level 3) | 90 minutes | Learn to Train
- Enhanced 3: 13-18 year old intermediates (Level 4) | 90-120 minutes | Active for Life
- Prodigy 1: 8-10 year old advanced (Level 4, HP) | 60-90 minutes | Learn to Train
- Prodigy 2: 11-13 year old advanced (Level 5, HP) | 90-120 minutes | Train to Train
- Prodigy 3: 13-18 year-old advanced (Level 5) | 120 minutes | Active for Life
- Ultra 1: 12-16 year old tournament (Level 6, HP) | 120 minutes | Train to Train
- Ultra 2: 14-18 year old tournament (Level 7, HP) | 150 minutes | Train to Compete
Watch our intro and elevate your child’s skills with us.
Active Start
Ages 3-6 years old. It’s all about learning to love movement.
In the Active Start stage of Long-Term Athlete Development, the purpose is to develop fundamental movement skills like running, jumping, hopping, throwing, and catching in a playful, generally unstructured environment. It is not appropriate to teach children at this age technical pickleball-specific skills, as they do not have the physical or mental ability to be successful and have fun with that level of learning and coaching. While the children use paddles and pickleballs to complete tasks, it is simple and playful, not specialized and competitive.
Pioneer 1
Pioneer 2
FUNdamentals
Ages 6-8 years old girls, 6-9 years old boys. It’s all about building physical literacy.
The FUNdamental stage of the LTAD model stresses the importance of developing the fundamental movement skills which include the ABCs (agility, balance, coordination, and speed) before diving into overly technical, fine-motor work of pickleball tactics and technique. Teaching all the strokes and positions and strategies of racquet sports to children this age has been proven ineffective. They do not have the athletic foundation to learn these items quickly and be successful, meaning they aren’t having fun and thus, many drop out of racquet sports. It is absolutely critical to make this stage fun and joyful for the kids, while still effectively teaching them the basics.
Enhanced 1
Learn To Train
Ages 8-11 years old girls, 9-12 years old boys. It’s all about developing pickleball specific skills.
The Learn to Train stage of Long-Term Athlete Development is the most important phase in a child’s life to develop sport-specific skills. This explains the focus on pickleball rather than fundamental movement development in these range of classes. With junior STAGE, there is also consistent level differentiation between classes to ensure proper learning and play environments. But at the end of the day, the emphasis is still on fun.
Note that Learn to Train is where children should be participating in a wide variety of sports to develop physical literacy, so Slate does not encourage specialization at this juncture.
Foundations 2
Enhanced 2
Prodigy 1
Train To Train
Ages 11-15 years old girls, 12-16 years old boys. It’s all about building the competitive pickleball engine.
There are specific windows of opportunity in Train to Train stages for children, such as stamina once the growth spurt hits for both boys and girls, and strength for girls as they reach their peak height velocity. The two classes in this stage focus on them.
We also continue to take into account the differences for boys and girls. Regarding competition, students in this stage are going to try their best to win, but it is still important to control any obsession with results for all parties involved, because it keeps children in the game and creates top performers by gradually building the pressure that being a national and professional competitor brings. There is a significant social, psychological, and mental component that must be properly nurtured gradually.
Prodigy 2
Train To Compete
Ages 14-18 years old girls, 15-18 years old boys. It’s all about optimizing the competitive pickleball engine.
Now that these upper tier athletes are highly experienced with sports and pickleball, are physically literate, and have an overall fantastic foundation across the board, they are ready for the intense training, pressure, and competitions required to become at the top of the game. This explains the shift to more competitive practice, where skill building is less prominent, but “optimizing the engine” is. They are psychologically prepared for the highest of pressures, including devastating losses and massive wins which will invariably occur as a professional athlete, and could even be life-changing.
Active For Life
Ages 12-18 years old. It’s all about loving the game for life.
The Active for Life stage is for those athletes who have successfully completed the first three stages of Long-Term Athlete Development, meaning they are physically literate, but are not on the “excellence” pathway. Most players of sport end up in the Active for Life stage without ever being a professional (and that’s totally okay!), so it is important to us to ensure that all levels and needs are being met in the junior STAGE program.
For those students who come in without having proper physical literacy, remedial training is important, which we encourage to be completed in private lessons, or specialty semi-private lessons with similarly-leveled players.
Foundations 3
Enhanced 3
Prodigy 3
The Circuit
The Circuit is designed to provide optimal play and competitive experiences for children. It is divided into four separate Tiers following Long-Term Athlete Development stages.
Cost: $15/hour
Camp
Pickleball Camp at Slate is more than just pickleball. It is an ultra-fun athletic and sports camp that brings players together to learn, cooperate, play, and compete across a wide spectrum of gamified activities. It is a camp for building physical literacy no matter what age and stage your child is at.
The program includes pickleball learning progressions, competitive applications, physical development games, and other sport blocks such as soccer, dodgeball, basketball, and more.
I never thought my kids could love pickleball this much. The coaches are incredible and really know how to bring out the best in my kids. They've improved so much in the short time of the beta test.