Tennis - Laporte to train at prestigious academy |26 June 2015

At the initiative of Philippe De Beats, honorary consul of Seychelles in Belgium, young Seychellois Damien Laporte will have the chance to train at the Justine Henin Academy from July 6-10.
Laporte, 13, has been picked and will be flying to Belgium after several tournaments in France with the Seychelles junior team.

In the past, Mr De Beats has helped the Seychelles Tennis Association (STA) to propose a clinic with Justine Henin where Laporte had the opportunity to show his skills to the former female world number one.

A Belgian, Henin won 43 World Tennis Association (WTA) singles titles and seven Grand Slam singles titles, including four French Open titles, one Australian Open title, and two US Open titles. She also won the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships twice and the singles gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

After her remarkable career as a tennis player, Henin wanted to support a range of concepts built and lived during her long experience. She aims to convey a range of values of sports training like courage, fighting spirit, respect, discipline. In 2007 she decided to create her tennis academy.

To carry out her academy project she built a magnificent infrastructure in Brussels, the Club Justine Henin, and she is surrounded by an experienced team who shares her know-how and knowledge.
Today, her academy welcomes students/players from around the world who have a personal development project and tennis.

This project was supported by Sports Minister Vincent Meriton, National Sports Council chief executive Giovanna Rousseau and STA chairman Garry Albert.

As a first try, they all hope that this opportunity will become a partnership between Belgium and Seychelles and perhaps we could see in the future a few players from the Justine Henin Academy coming to train at Roche Caïman and several Seychellois tennis players going there for more training.

Laporte is currently in Toulouse taking part in tournaments with the juniors. He has already won an U16 tournament (TC Ramonville) and will take part in two other junior tournaments and another two for adults.

Along with Laporte the junior team are Shaun Andriamaro, Theo Barois, Dawn Rene, Christian Payet and Travis Gedeon.
Sheryl Youpa and Marie May Isnard are also part of the trip and are taking part in tournaments too.

This trip is supervised by national technical director, Frenchman Frederic Canale, and the group will be back on July 7.
Damien on his part will be back on July 13.