Kate Lucy
Age: 24
University: University of Exeter
Studying: MSc Sport & Exercise Science
The University of Exeter boasts one of the largest tennis clubs in the country with 470 members. As well as being one of the most successful universities on the BUCS circuit, the club also runs tennis for all abilities with a number of leagues and competitions throughout the university term. Their success is partly down to the work of their University Tennis Coordinator (UTC) Kate Lucy. As part of our ‘Spotlight On’ series we caught up with her to discuss life as a UTC.
The tennis club has seen its membership grow from around 250 members three years ago to 470 members – you must be delighted!
It’s brilliant; we’ve really focused on increasing participation in tennis and giving people more opportunities to play, across all levels of tennis from beginners through to high performance.
What sessions are on offer within the club?
We have a wide variety of sessions; our main coaching sessions take place at the weekend and for levels from beginner to intermediate. Then throughout the week we have our more advanced players training. We also have BUCS training throughout the week, two Cardio Tennis sessions and two free court sessions which people can just use as they wish, and then finally we have a match play session for two hours per week.
Who undertakes the coaching within the club?
The coaching for beginners and intermediates is all provided by students, we can support students financially to undertake their coaching qualifications and we use some of the BUCS players to help with coaching. We have a pool of around 30 coaches we can use and about ten of them do the main bulk of the coaching.
What competitions do you offer?
Aside from the BUCS players competing weekly, the box league is probably the most popular part of our club. We’ve had 160 people sign up this year which is brilliant. Our tennis ambassador Natalie Hatton is in charge of the box league and she does an excellent job. We’ve also run timed tennis matches, so matches which last 20 minutes and we’ve also had a lot of ratings matches which were really popular.
Any special competitions you ran throughout the year?
We ran a timed tennis competition to coincide with the Davis Cup. Each team was given a country to represent and we wore fancy dress. We had decorations and prizes and two players in each team were BUCS players and two were non BUCS players. There was a singles and doubles match with the points counting towards the team total and everyone had a really great day.
What does your role as UTC involve day to day?
I do a lot of the organising and the admin for the tennis club and I also work to promote the club, creating new tournaments and events in order to attract new players to the club. I have regular meetings with the club committee and I work closely with them to guide them, but also to encourage them and ensure I get the most out of them for the club.
University Tennis Coordinator positions are normally two year positions and those starting for this September will be advertised in the next two months here:
For more information on University Tennis visit www.tennisfoundation.org.uk and follow the hashtag #unitennis on Twitter.
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