TENNIS Jamaica has found a way to aid some of the country’s most promising young tennis players to balance the rigorous schedule of the players’ circuit while keeping up with their educational studies through online schooling.

The association’s honorary secretary, Christine Gore, told Sporting World that the body had partnered with KBC Learning Centre for the initiative.

She added that the competitive playing schedule demands sometimes as many as 30 weeks per year out of students’ time which traditional schools do not allow for.

The Cross Roads-based institution was established to provide assistance with school improvement programmes to underperforming schools and school districts and to provide direct supplemental educational services to students and professional development services to teachers.

Top local female players — including Interscholastic Girls 18 singles champion Siquena Sinclair, Shantal Blackwood, and Monique Hanson — have been completing their secondary level education through an online programme, while students from as far as Hanover have been able to do studies there.

Another student, Donovan Crumbie, is currently preparing for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) external exams through the programme.

“We are proud of it,” Gore said, adding that a number of the students are helped by the Canada-based organisation Karl Hale’s Helping Hands Jamaica Foundation.

“He sponsors them and Tennis Jamaica manages them on his behalf,” she said.

Hale played Davis Cup for Jamaica for ten years and is currently tournament director for the Rogers Cup Tennis Tournament in Toronto.

Gore said that the online education programme was essential to Tennis Jamaica’s goal of having young tennis players remain in the island to continue their training in a manner similar to that which exists in the United States and Europe where students travel with their laptops and do lessons between matches.

Local track and field athletes of school age have also been benefiting from KBC Learning programmes through a deal signed between the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association and telecommunications company FLOW signed in November 2008.