The League Secretary of the South Warwickshire Summer Tennis League, Corin Bishop announced that the "King Cup" will be awarded to Pershore Tennis Club with the title of
"Club of the Year" in 2016”.
They have been in the running in previous years but were deserving winners over the 2016 summer season. This decision was based first by eliminating from the 23 clubs in the league those who did not enter the Junior League, which left eleven. Then any that had been fined or docked points for rule infringements or fielding only one pair during the current season of the Men’s league and caused problems for the league administrators were excluded, which left six. Five of the remaining clubs had won the award before, Bidford-on-Avon the inaugural winners in 2004 and again in 2015, Evesham who won in 2014, Littletons who won in 2013, Henley who won in 2011, and Stratford-on-Avon who won in 2009. In order to spread the honour around to different deserving clubs these previous winners were discounted, which left Pershore as the clear winners for 2016.
Pershore have been involved with the league for 18 years since joining in 1999 and currently have two Men’s teams and one Junior pair in the league. They are led by the Pershore College Principal Peter Corbishley who, in the later years handed over responsibilities to their two men’s captains of the summer league teams, Dave Lambert for the A Team and Dave Morris for the B Team, who have done a splendid job organising their teams without a blemish especially this year. Steve Bauer is the club coach who organised the Junior pair in their competition and they did themselves proud finishing second only in Pool C to Bidford who have progressed to the Final.
Pershore A finished in a comfortable fifth place in Division 1, only four points short of promotion to the top tier of the league. Meanwhile Pershore B finished their season in style as champions of Division Four with promotion to Division Three due for 2017.
For all these reasons Pershore Tennis Club is fully deserving of their title Club of their Year 2016.