It's about building better people, not just better players.

That is the theme that I ended my keynote presentation with at Tomlinson Middle School in Fairfield, Connecticut last week. You see, even though I teach tennis to children and adults alike for a living, I firmly believe that all good teachers not only educate their students on a specific skill but on the broad skill of being a better person; and being a better person, a direct by-product of that, would be a better improvement and success in that specific skill. For example, the world's #1 male tennis player currently, Roger Federer, had a breakthrough at Wimbledon against Pete Sampras in 2001. And he has said in an interview that at that moment, he had a breakthrough on his attitude; i.e. he was a better person, and therefore, had the best result he has ever had and then became the world's #1 player shortly thereafter. Federer stated that "The big turn around came around ... when I beat Sampras at Wimbledon...I got my attitude right and I've been on an incredible run since. I had a very tough temper." It is not a coincidence that he was able to focus on having a better attitude and then had better result. I believe that having a better attitude and being a good sportsman directly impact our success and our performance.

Ultimately, we want to combine having a good attitude with winning. And although winning is not everything, it certainly feels good when you win by winning the right way. So when I was speaking to this classroom full of students and teachers, I realized that I am an educator of personal betterment not just a tennis instructor. And don't get me wrong, I have a passion for tennis and I have a vested interest in each of my students performing better at the game, but I would much rather be associated with a top human being or person that has good manners, good sportsmanship, good follow up, good eye contact, and in general, good human being, than someone who is a top tennis performer, however, lacks the basic human relations skills that help people succeed in whatever they do. This reminds me of when I was still a Dale Carnegie student and aspiring as instructor, and winning friends and influencing people was the mantra that we focused our studies around.

The theme of my goal setting workshop is my world record attempt for the longest contrived tennis rally. Our second world record attempt is scheduled for August 9th, and my keynote presentation was focused on goal setting and achieving your goals and dreams. I know that having goals makes me focus everyday on achieving success. So August 9th will be a big chapter in that success because we are set out to not only break the world record of 24,696 strokes but to surpass the symbolic number of 27,000 strokes, a tribute to Save the Children, which is going to be one of our charities supported and benefited. My brother and I both have children that are under the age of 5, and 27,000 represents the number of children that die every day as a result of preventable and curable diseases. They did not get mosquito netting to prevent them from getting malaria or a warm, wool cap to keep their head warm when they were born. Stay tuned for our world record attempt. If you want help in anyway, please e-mail me at angeloarossetti@gmail.com.!