Lucy Dean has won the Aegon Coach of the Month award for January in recognition of her work at Coolhurst Lawn Tennis Club, North London.
Lucy recently took on the role of Head of Junior programmes and has worked to increase the numbers on the programme from 150 to 300 in just 5 months. A structured mini tennis programme has been implemented, coaches have been trained up as competition organisers and 9 young people have been trained up as Level 1 tennis assistants.
Lucy’s next goal is to go into the local schools and deliver a quality schools outreach to the local community.
“I am honoured to receive the Aegon Coach of the Month award for January and believe that this is down to the hard work by all at Coolhurst Tennis Club to turnaround the junior programme at the club,” said Lucy after learning of her award.
“Since joining the club six months I have doubled the number of kids on the programme to 340 and introduced the Mini Tennis Rally Awards with great success. I have also introduced a performance programme for kids who want to play competition to a high standard.
The club has supported me in training up 9 level one coaches, 2 level two coaches and 2 level three coaches and this has undoubtedly made big improvements in the delivery of the coaching programme. I have introduced regular internal competition for all ages and am currently organising our annual Junior Open for February Half Term. At present, I am working on introducing a schools programme in the local community to increase tennis participation in our area.”
For me, what I enjoy most about coaching is introducing kids to the game and maintaining their involvement and seeing their enjoyment of the game grow and grow.