Abstract:
Tennis is an open skilled racket sport. Agility is one of most important physical qualities that
should be developed in the very beginner level of the tennis players. This research was
conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a planned training programme for improving the
agility of female tennis players at the beginner level. The selected population was beginner
female tennis players in year I semester II from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Languages,
Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka. Sample was divided as treatment group and control
group. Eight-week training programme was applied to the treatment group and the control group
was not involved in the particular training. Before starting the specific training, Illinois agility
test was done with both groups. The mean time of the treatment group was 21.238s and that of
the control group was 21.152s. After eight weeks of specific training applied to the treatment
group, Illinois agility test was conducted again with both treatment group and control group.
There, the mean time was 20.196s in the treatment group and that of the control group was
21.178s. It could be concluded that the specific training programme had made an effect to
improve timing of the agility test. Then the paired t-test was carried out to conform the
effectiveness of the training programme. There, the p-value for the treatment group was
calculated as 0.012. It was less than the significance level 0.05.for the control group, p-value
was calculated as 0.874. It was higher than the significance level, 0.05. It could be concluded
that the planned eight week training programme was effective to improve the agility of the
sample. It can be recommended that the training plan used in the study can be applied to
improve the agility among beginner tennis players.
Keywords: Tennis; agility; Illinois test; Beginners
