The Tennis Foundation is pleased to announce that University Tennis Development Awards have been awarded to 52 universities to help grow the game in the 2013-14 academic year.
The awards of up to £1,000 were given out to support University Tennis Clubs to help more students and staff play tennis.
Universities applied for an award based upon the following areas; people, programmes, promotion and improving access to tennis for disabled people.
For the first time this year half of the award was allocated towards a University Tennis Ambassador, a voluntary position for undergraduates, who will take on the responsibility of realising the aims of their application.
"The funding has allowed social players to get more court time and therefore more participants have been retained. This, in turn, has impacted on the quality and provision offered to our competitive teams. Moreover, students beginning university now have the opportunity to work through from social to competitive tennis if they want to," said Anthony Hennelly, Sports Development Officer at Imperial College London.
"The Development Award has been key to growing tennis at Nottingham Trent University, ensuring that we have access to support and resources to help build a sustainable club for the future. It has allowed tennis at NTU to explore opportunities that would have normally been restricted due to lack of funding," said Oliver Ward, Racket Sport Development Officer at Nottingham Trent University.
The Tennis Foundation's Higher Education Manager, Alistair Higham, added, "We were very impressed by the standard of applications this year and we are delighted so many universities are committed to getting more people play tennis."
The Development Awards are just one of many support tools from British tennis to support the game in higher education institutions across the country.
Support is also available through the University Tennis Coordinator programme and for university performance programmes.
Find out more about tennis in higher education here.
Keep up-to-date with university tennis news on Twitter by searching #unitennis.
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