Community Update - April 2021 - Edgbaston What an amazing time it is for tennis. Tennis is enabling everyone to stay active, and helping everyone physically, socially and mentally. During lockdown we did our best to engage with juniors and set up some zoom sessions; uptake was low. The feedback being that the juniors spent all day on their screens for school so weren’t fully engaged for tennis. Once we knew the courts were open March 29th we communicated to everyone at Lordswood and Cannon Hill Park. The uptake has been incredible, at Cannon Hill Park 5 courts are fully booked 9am-9pm every day since opening. Its amazing to see the activity going on. We decided to start the programmes on April 19th across both venues. The coaches have reached out to the players via email text and calls to re engage everyone. At Cannon Hill we have 8 hours a week of programmes at the moment, this is also to allow the general public a lot of court time access. After half term we will increase the coaching programme. All courses there are fully booked. There is a 15 hour a week programme at Lordswood and we have 48 juniors currently enrolled. We have reached out to the local schools to get the teachers signed up to the LTA teacher training initiative. If the teacher completes a 2hours on line course they receive £250 voucher to be spent directly on tennis. Our goal is to enable the teachers to promote, engage with tennis all year in the schools. If tennis is accessible in schools as well, it will really make the kids want to play more outside of school hours. Having courts accessible to the public really makes it an easy pathway for everyone to continue to play. There are lots of schools that won’t take up the LTA offer and we have reached out to offer the following: Assemblies Taster sessions Curriculum and after school clubs At this stage the schools haven’t confirmed their commitment but the plan is to target minimum 6 schools in the areas of CHP and Lordswood to introduce more tennis. We would like to see 200 children before the summer holidays. Festivals and Open Days Festivals and Open Days are a great way to engage with large groups of children. We plan to do a festival and an open day at both venues before the summer holidays. These days have always been successful to introduce kids to tennis and the conversion has always been successful. Membership continues to grow at Lordswood and since reopening we have had 22 new joiners. Membership is renewed in May so we will be doing a promotional offer for current and new members. Facilities Just prior to lockdown 4 we had installed the new gate access at Lordswood. This allows non members to book and secure their court in a safe environment. There is a fee for non-members to book the court, but it opens up tennis to more again in the community. We were proud to get this initiative completed and giving more people the chance to play tennis. Staffing Ben Porter resigned in lockdown. We have James, Jordan and Jack leading programmes in the community. We are recruiting a full time Head of Community Coach. This is a very important appointment for the community and it’s a good time to re evaluate the goals we want to achieve, especially after all the lockdowns. The community projects are very important to the club, and we have had inconsistencies due to lockdown and also to staffing. We want to be very active in the community and get involved with Schools Parent and toddler groups Make tennis accessible eg; payment options Engage with the parents and families Local leagues Grow membership
