Huntingdon Mustang duo learned tennis on YouTube

HUNTINGDON – Scott Hampton wasn’t sure if he would have a boys tennis team at Huntingdon High School this year after all eight players on last year’s team graduated.

But an announcement for tryouts and a do-it-yourself attitude from two players put the Mustangs back on the tennis court and help them compete with teams from bigger schools in District 13 A-AA.

Grant Hilliard and Scotty Ball are a couple of seniors at Huntingdon who competed the last four years on the Mustangs’ golf team.

“We were done with golf, and I heard an announcement about tryouts for the tennis team, and I thought, ‘well that’s something else I could do before I graduate,’” Ball said. “So, I talked Grant into it, and we decided to try out.”

There was one catch though. Neither one had ever stepped onto a tennis court before. So before the tryout, Hilliard and Ball went to the internet to try to learn more about the game.

“We watched a lot of videos on YouTube to learn about the game,” Hilliard said. “We watched instructional videos and watched big matches to see how the pros play and get an idea of how they do it, and we took that and tried to learn the game from that.”

The pair took the knowledge they got from the videos and worked on what they learned on the court.

“They came to tryouts and actually had a decent serve for someone who’d never been on the court before just a few days before that,” Hampton said. “I asked them how they did it, and they told me about YouTube.

“It’s funny because I’m the type of person, and I tell my students too, to learn how to do anything they need to do from YouTube. So I was totally on board when they told me about it.”

There haven’t been many opportunities to show their improvement as much of the season’s early matches were rained out or postponed. But they work well as a doubles team and hope to compete in the district doubles tournament.

“The first thing we wanted to figure out was serving effectively, and once we did that, it was just a matter of getting on the court and consistently keeping the ball in play,” Hilliard said.

Doubles works for both because they’ve learned to communicate in that quick environment, and Ball wishes he’d started playing earlier.

“It’s a fun game, and it’s like golf for me,” Ball said. “I expect to keep playing as long as I can call someone up and see if they want to play one afternoon.”

Both players said they continue to watch all the footage they can on YouTube, and they’ll probably use the video website to learn how to do other things too.

Reach Brandon Shields at bjshields@jacksonsun.com or at 425-9751. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at jacksonsunsports.