The first of the BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) League matches begin this week with over 2,500 fixtures planned to take place between 312 university teams across the country during the winter months.
University tennis is growing across the country, with entries showing there has been an increase in teams in the BUCS Leagues for 2012-13. This year there will be 187 Mens teams taking part, an increase of 3.7% from the previous year, and 125 Womens teams showing an increase of 13.6% from the previous year, including 9 completely new institutions.
In the last two weeks, university tennis clubs have been holding team selection trials with some of the universities who form part of the Tennis Foundation's University Performance Programme holding pre-season training camps.
Team tennis will once again become the focus for teams of all levels from the current powerhouse of Mens Tennis at Stirling University to the ladies team at Liverpool John Moores University who will compete for the first time against University of Central Lancashire later in the month in Northern League 2A.
The league competition is complimented by a knockout style team competition and a national individual championships which last year saw a 40% increase in participation.
At the individual player level, the Tennis Foundation have worked closely with BUCS to capture all results from BUCS matches so that all players representing their university team in any BUCS league this year will be able to check on their progress nationally on a new University Leaderboard.
Alistair Higham, the Tennis Foundation's Higher Education Manager, said: "It is great to see the highly competitive side of university tennis continue to grow as well as the development side. With the new University Leaderboard updated every two weeks on the LTA website and the plans for University Singles Rankings, the profile of university tennis continues to rise."
"It promises to be a great winter of university tennis and it is great to see the number of teams and participants grow as the competition continues to get stronger. Team Tennis is a great format and suits university tennis brilliantly so it is great to see more players and teams committing to BUCS tennis," added Iain Bates, BUCS Sports Advisory Group Chair for Tennis.
You can follow results and updates on Twitter through #unitennis
At a team level, you can follow league positions, results and fixtures at the BUCS website as well as on individual university websites.
More information on the Tennis Foundation's University Tennis Progamme as well as fact sheets on tennis from a number of universities.
Share