Trainee tennis leaders at the Hylands Tennis Club held the club’s first Parent and Child tournament that saw adults and tots and others in-between pit their racquet skills against each other on Sunday 19 July to raise £180.
Sixteen teams registered for the tournament, with each team made up of one child and one parent. Training racquets and balls - and a short court - were used to level the playing field and prevent burgeoning Murrays and Nadals from using strength or experience to annihilate others at the club. The only skill that was useful was patience.
The four tennis leaders, aged 13 and 15 years, had spent weeks organising the tournament as part of their three-month leadership training course to become game ambassadors in their club, schools and communities. They had arrived an hour earlier to put the finishing touches to their first tournament.
Players young and old put their all into it. Children fell out with their parents who they felt were not pulling their weight, while parents who had last played using wooden racquets saved their breath for the mad dashes to the net, just grateful that they didn’t fall on the way.
After highly competitive playing and close results, the semi-finalists were announced consisting of the Dar pairing, the Jones pairing, the Walsh pairing and the Paige pairing.
Finally, the final arrived, with the Paige family and the Dar family, battling it out. The Dars were the tournament winners, with the Paige, Walsh and Jones families finishing off in 2nd, 3rd and 4th places respectively.
Club administrator Giorgio Federico Bugnatelli said:
“The Volunteer Involvement Programme (VIP) plays an integral role in the delivery and development of sport, play and leisure activities within Hylands and it starts with young trainees completing the Tennis Leader Awards. Our young people volunteer because they want to do more and I feel privileged to see them blossom in self confident and yet compassionate individuals. They make us proud. ”
Kimberley, one of tennis leaders said: “I was a bit apprehensive when we started planning the tournament. We had never done anything like this before. But the skills we had learned when training to be tennis leaders helped us put together the tournament and made us realise we could do anything if we put our minds to it. Everybody worked hard as part of the team, and it was due to this that we managed to bring it all together. I can now confidently face any challenge put before me, as with a little planning, you can achieve anything.…..”
A parent at the club said: “A fantastic and well organised day run by Hylands tennis leaders, which enabled me to play tennis in a fun, enjoyable way with my daughter”
And another added: “The tournament was a great experience. It was really good to see so many families coming to support the children in their fundraising effort and also to have some fun. It brought us to get together as a club and made us appreciate that we could achieve great things if we worked as a team”
After this brilliant success, the young tennis leaders are planning to make this an annual event
Notes to editors
In the photo from left to right: Finalists - Evie Page and her father Richard. Framaz Dar and his son Ilyas.
Front Row: Tennis Leaders - Kimberley Montague, Megan Weeden, Alan Jones and Jack Barnard.
The Tennis Leaders Award is suitable for young people just starting out on the tennis pathway with exit routes as coaches, referees, umpires, competition organisers, club officials and community volunteers.
Hylands is a community focussed not for profit tennis club aiming to facilitate access to tennis coaching and playing via quality programmes at affordable rates with a long term ambition to grow and sustain the game of Tennis.
Website: www.hylandstennis.co.uk
Email: hylandsclub@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/hylandscasc
Location: http://www.hylandstennis.co.uk/how-to-find-hylands