Barbara Borwell of Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough won the2012 Evening Gazette Coach / Mentor Of the Year Award held at the Riverside Stadium October 25.
The Tennis World based coach deserves recognition of her dedication, coaching and voluntary work over the years. Barbara’s unrelenting desire to get as many children and adults playing and enjoying tennis has been amazing. This includes participation along with competitive elements and Barbara has always ensured that it remains fun, which has ultimately seen huge retention rates in coaching, school and other sessions.
Barbara started her career as a school teacher and she got involved with tennis around 1987. This was due to Tennis World, Middlesbrough opening and her daughter, Sarah being really keen to get involved in playing short tennis (now called mini tennis). Once they got involved in the Club Barbara was keen to get short tennis up and running and the rest is history! Since then Barbara has become the mini tennis guru for not only Middlesbrough but the whole region! Her passion to engage as many youngsters in the sport has seen hundreds of young children start their tennis journey at the Middlesbrough based Club. Some of these have developed into International players including Sophie Procter (daughter of Mark Procter)and Abi Curry.
Around 1997 Barbara took on the Durham Cleveland Mini tennis Schools Coordinator role. Barbara and Jill Caroll helped put on a schools competition for Year 3 pupils which initially had a small number of schools. This then developed into the Tony Blair Sports Foundation competition in 2007 and at its peak in 2010 had a total of 439 schools take part, which is the biggest and most prestigious Year 3 schools competition in the country. This meant that over 10,000 children received tennis coaching / teaching in their school environment and over 3512 of them competed in the competition!
Barbara has helped promote teaching opportunities for school’s and there are now over 580 school’s who have received the free AEGON Schools equipment packs. This has been through Barbara’s partnership work with local networks and people.
Barbara’s voluntary work includes untold hours working behind the scenes to cement all of the hard work. She often turns up at mini tennis competitions, volunteering umpiring matches and encouraging players to enjoy the experience. She also mentors new coaches in her spare time giving them the guidance and inspiration to continue with their tennis journey’s.
Furthermore, in 2009 Wendy Glasper (who is now the Secretary of the North East Visually Impaired Tennis Club) found out about blind tennis for the visually impaired. Wendy did not know anything about tennis, and looked for the nearest indoor tennis centre and found Barbara at Tennis World. Barbara seemed to jump out of the page to Wendy. Barbara didn’t know anything about blind tennis or anything to do with people having a sight problem. She looked on the internet to find out all she could and offered Wendy help. Wendy could not have achieved what she has without Barbara’s help and as Wendy says,
“I cannot thank Barbara enough. We now have an established Visually Impaired Tennis Club and Barbara has been my rock. I wanted to nominate Barbara for the numerous voluntary hours she has given to me and everyone else who she has inspired over her long tennis career!
It was the 15th Evening Gazette Sports Awards and the room was filled with great sports people including Kat Copeland, Jade Jones, Millie Allen and Mark Proctor. Kat Copeland won the Sportsperson of the Year Award following her gold medal, which was Teesside’s first in 100 years! Mark Proctor who’s kids were coached by Barbara when they started mini tennis at Tennis World won a Lifetime Achievement Award for services to football.