On Sunday 4th March former world number 5 and British number 1 tennis player, Jo Durie, celebrated the junior successes at the annual Tennis Works and Stony Stratford Tennis Club presentation evening.
As part of a 2 day visit to Milton Keynes organised by local tennis organisation, Tennis Works, Jo Durie and her career coach, Alan Jones, took some time out to spend an evening with parents, club officials, junior members and the coaching team of Stony Stratford Tennis Club as all the junior members were acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts over the past year.
Tennis Works started at Stony Stratford Tennis Club in June 2011 and since then the programme has double in size with the club membership being the highest it has even been in its 100 year history. The presentation evening was a huge success with nearly 100 people in attendance at the Cock Hotel in Stony Stratford with Tennis Works directors, John Cavill and Melvyn Jones, hosting the night. It was great for the attendees to hear of Jo’s experiences in tennis, from her humble beginnings through to the experience of walking out onto centre court at the US Open with 25,000 people watching her. Jo has been a supporter of Tennis Works since 2009 when she previously visited the area and during her speech she said, “I applaud the hard work and commitment that the club has put in to making it such a success. I’ve had a wonderful life through tennis and to see so many youngsters starting out on this journey is fantastic”.
As well as working with Jo during her career, Alan Jones was the former National Coach to the LTA, coached Jeremy Bates to 48 in the world and has worked with no less that 30 players who have competed at Wimbledon. He is one of Britain’s most respected coaches and he too applauded the wonderful work that is happening at the club by saying, “British tennis needs more people like John Cavill and Melvyn Jones working with forward thinking clubs. Tennis has so much to offer everyone and with what is quite obviously happening here, success is guaranteed”.
Every child who is in the programme that attended the evening were presented with a very special medal by Jo and Alan. Every year certain players are selected by the coaching team to receive the ‘Player of the Year’ trophy for their age group. These awards are based on effort and commitment to develop their game or helping others. Umar Gull took the 8&U category, Connor Kruse won the 9&U’s, Emily Honor was selected for 10&U’s, Tom Cunild for the 12&U’s and Kyle MacQueen for the 14&U’s.
The finale of the night was the presentation of the Tennis Works Player of the Year Cup which was awarded to 11 year old Emily Honor for her incredible improvement over 2011 that led to her winning the 10&U, 12&U and 14&U club championships last year.
At the end of the evening, John Cavill said, “This has been a wonderful event and we are all very lucky to be a part of something so special and so much fun.”
For more information on Tennis Works at Stony Stratford Tennis Club go to
www.tennisworks.net/stony or email stony@tennisworks.net.