Now into the 3rd month of being in post as the manager of the King’s Lynn & West Norfolk Community Tennis Pilot, lots has been happening to develop the project. My approach is very much embedding tennis into the culture and the programmes of existing community service providers in the area. A community service provider doesn’t automatically mean local tennis club as tennis is already happening here. My focus is on new ways of engaging the community in tennis.
Over the past few months I have been engaging with key partners and building the foundations for the project. The key partners include King’s Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council, North Lynn Discovery Centre, College of West Anglia, West Norfolk School Sports Partnership and King’s Lynn Community Football. With these key partners we are working together to build a workforce and develop programmes or embed tennis in existing programmes.
Some examples of this are with the Discovery Centre and their extensive programmes aimed at young people, particularly those from the deprived urban and rural areas. There is a programme of activities throughout the summer holidays that will be happening across West Norfolk delivered by the Discovery Centre and the Borough Council’s leisure centres. Tennis is going to be part of this programme and where possible will link with local places to play.
We are working with the Borough Council and King’s Lynn Community Football (KLCF) to bring tennis to an existing neighbourhood football league on Multi use games areas (MUGAs) in the urban wards of King’s Lynn. Alongside the football we will be delivering a mini version of tennis that will then lead to a competitive league where teams from the various neighbourhoods will compete against each other. To support this we are training coaches from KLCF to be able to deliver tennis sessions. We are also marking out the MUGAs with mini tennis red courts to enable this to happen.
Work force is an issue with all the programmes that we are hoping to roll out through the pilot. We are developing coaches through KLCF as mentioned above. We are also working with the Discovery Centre and Top Coaching to develop coaches who can then deliver tennis as part of their programmes. Another key partner in developing the sport and a workforce to support this is the College of West Anglia. There has already been a tennis leaders course and a level 1 coaching course at the college. We are working with the college to support and develop programmes and opportunities for their students in tennis.