The College of West Anglia Sports has this week been presented with the British Tennis Award for Further Education 2012 by the Lawn Tennis Association and the Tennis Foundation.
The college, one of 45 across Great Britain supported last year, have been providing tennis opportunities both in and outside the classroom. They have been using tennis resources in lectures to help students with their BTEC sports qualification and have added tennis to their enrichment programme, enabling any student in the college to access tennis in their spare time. They have also trained a number of students through their Level 1 Coaching Assistant Course and have trail blazed a new 'Student Tennis Ambassador' concept, now being delivered nationally.
The award was presented to the college by Cathie Sabin, Deputy President of the LTA and Trustee of The Tennis Foundation, whilst students were delivering a tennis session to a local primary school, using skills they had recently acquired through completing the Tennis Leaders modules.
Cathie Sabin said: "The Tennis Foundation and LTA are delighted to be awarding the national Further Education Tennis Award for 2012 to The College of West Anglia - they are a shining example of how working together can help more students play tennis. Kings Lynn is also one of eight Community Tennis Pilots currently taking place across Great Britain and it is fantastic to see the college so actively engaged with the pilot, making a positive impact across the wider community."
Tommy Goode, The College of West Anglia's Programme Manager for Sport and Leisure, said, "It is a great honour to win the Further Education award. It shows the great contribution of students and staff to the development of tennis through increasing participation and improving coach education. Our partnership work with the LTA and Tennis Foundation has really added value to our learner's programmes and provided our students with a number of great opportunities."
The Tennis Foundation's Further Education Manager, Christine Sprowell, added, "I hope the students found the tennis leaders course enjoyable and informative. I really enjoyed working with them and the College certainly has some very strong leaders who will be a great asset to help more people play tennis both at the College and in the surrounding community."
The students were given an opportunity to develop their leadership skills with some on court activities aimed at running activities with local primary schools as well as ideas for running informal Mini Tennis enrichment and competition in college. They also had some high energy action taking part in a Cardio Tennis workout session, which had the group hitting loads of balls to high-tempo music, burning lots of calories and having lots of fun!
The College of West Anglia join national award winners from other areas of education, recognised for their efforts in developing tennis, with The Tony Blair Sports Foundation recently scooping Schools Tennis Award and The University of Exeter picking up the University Tennis gong.
Find out more about British tennis' support for Further Education colleges.
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