Lady Bay Tennis Club held a Murray Mania campaign on the back of his marvellous win at Wimbledon. The aim was to build on the excitement of his win and to introduce lots of children to the sport of tennis.
The day started at 9.30am and ran through to 3.30pm with over 450 children attending in different time slots. The children participated in a variety of fun tennis based activities which were focused on not only fun but gaining skill and techniques- we had different zones focusing on different skills eg backhands, volleys, forehands and once they heard three whistles they were to change zones as quickly as possible which kept them active! Each one of our tennis courts was named a professional tennis player such as Andy Murray, Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Laura Robson, Novak Djokovic as it developed their knowledge of tennis players. Luckily for us we had great weather which made the day so much more enjoyable! The children who attended our event had a fantastic day and left the club with huge smiles on their faces.
The festival was ran by Martyn Jones the club coach along side the school contact Nikki Crowe, between them they ran a very successful day. The sessions were delivered by tennis coaches and teachers and parents of whom with out there support the even would not have gone ahead.
The event was pulled together through several partners from local school to our LTA county office in helping us by loaning some equipment.
The success of the event will be judged not only on the feed back from parents but from the dominoe effect that the event has created.
Already we have had over 30 new signups of children with more coming all the time mentioning the event. Adults too has seen an increase as they saw hw busy the event was.
Many thanks to everyone who took part in the event and hope that this helps other clubs have the confidence to put something like this together.