Welcome to Season 11, Episode 26, of the ParentingAces Podcast, a proud member of the Tennis Channel Podcast Network. In this week's episode, Lisa talks with Shelia Townsend, former junior and college player, current coach and Tennis Parent, and the creator of 4 the Love.

The mission of 4 the Love is to develop the skills of its clients to the status they strive to achieve - whether it be high school, collegiate or professional. They believe in a holistic approach to coaching and instruction and train players to be a whole and complete athlete. Shelia Townsend has a deep-seated love of tennis, and it has been an integral part of her life. She has played tennis since she was a young girl and eventually earned a scholarship to Lincoln University. 

Her daughters, Simone and Taylor, followed in her footsteps, with Simone playing college tennis while Taylor went straight from the Juniors to the Pro Tour. Through the experience of coaching her daughters, Shelia knew she wanted to bring holistic coaching to the tennis world. In this way she is able to guide players to have rigor, ethics, character, discipline and more.

Shelia is also a huge proponent of high school tennis. She has been coaching the tennis team at Boca High for seven years. In 2021, Townsend made history as the first and only African American female high school tennis coach in Florida to take her team to the state championships. Her coaching style has helped her players attend Harvard, Princeton, Florida State, University of Central Florida, Florida Atlantic University, Holy Cross, Lynn University and more.

To contact Shelia, you can follow her and message her on Instagram at https://instagram.com/4thelovetennis. She is also active on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/4thelovetennis.

If you’re so inclined, please share this – and all our episodes! – with your tennis community. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via your favorite podcast app. If you haven’t already, be sure to become a Member of ParentingAces by visiting https://parentingaces.com/membership-join. And check out our logo’d merch as well as our a la carte personal consultations in our online shop (Premium Members received FREE SHIPPING every day!).

CREDITS

Intro & Outro Music: Morgan Stone aka STØNE

Audio & Video Editing: Lisa Stone

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