Earlier in 2023, Tennis Canada launched a new five-year strategic plan to reassert its ambitions for the growth and development of Canadian tennis and chart a roadmap that will enable the federation to achieve its goals and ensure sustained success for our sport.

Within the plan, a slight alteration was made to the organization’s “Vision”. What was previously “to become a world-leading tennis nation” was updated to “to be a world-leading tennis nation”. On the surface, this small update may seem minor or superfluous, but it represents a marked shift in the federation’s achievements and aspirations in the past decade and moving forwards.

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

That tall task is the responsibility of everyone at Tennis Canada, not least its High-Performance team. Part of their plan to keep Canada at the sport’s top table is a revamped U15s program which was soft launched last year before being fully rolled out in 2023. The U15 Canadian Prospect Team is designed to help track, monitor, support and develop young, promising tennis players ages 10-14. The program will help players to transition to their next stage of development by giving them better resources to take part in international competition, holding national camps to participate in, offering consistent player monitoring and support services.

“The U15 Canadian Prospect Team serves as one of the first building blocks for establishing our country’s future tennis stars,” said Jocelyn Robichaud, Tennis Canada’s Head of U15 Development. “It’s a vital part of our high-performance development pathway, and I’m very excited for this year’s new cohort to get underway with the national camps in Toronto and Montreal.”

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

The three main objectives of the national camps are to foster a high performance and team environment, to evaluate and analyze key performance indicators in order to set individualized objectives, and to provide participants with sport science and sport medicine support and education.

In addition to on-court drills, practices and match plays facilitated by Tennis Canada’s National coaches, these camps also include additional off-court sessions to help players understand the importance of on- and off-court traits and habits required to help them reach their maximum potential not only as a tennis player but as a person too.

In total, 29 girls and 36 boys have been invited to this year’s U15 Canadian Prospect Team and will be taking part in the camps. Overall, 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 the U15 Canadian Prospect Team can be found here.