EVTC Newsletter 2015
Another new year is upon us, 2015 is very much a year when we need to pull together while we gear up for a new membership push.
Traditionally all our new membership has very much been by word of mouth and recommendations for the quality of our club and the standard of coaching. Throughout the sports market and tennis in particular there is a decline in participation, some have called it the post Olympic hangover where everyone was waiting for the ‘boom’ period but failed to hold onto the new intakes.
In our small part of this world of sport we have experienced a decline in our junior membership in particular so whatever the reason for this reduction in numbers we need to address it urgently. Here’s some of what we’re doing to address the situation:
Web Site
The long awaited new web site is nearly ready to launch and we will use this with a renewed series of approaches to the local schools to encourage kids of all levels of sporting ability to try tennis for all the best reasons of fun, exercise, co-ordination and sociability.
Open Days
We will be running a series of Open Days to let local people know where we are and to try tennis or possibly come back to it for former players. I hope the regular players will be able to give some time to making potential new members welcome, this is vitally important to the future of the club.
Social Events
We will be putting together a few social events which will include another Golf Day, a friendly cricket match against the cricket club which Rupert is pulling together. Sam is aiming to have a quiz Night and a Wine Tasting evening at the club over the year which I hope you will support.
AGM
This year’s AGM was particularly productive and we have a couple of new committee members in Georgia Smith and Simon Essex. There is little doubt that this year will be very important to the future of the club and I hope that we can all contribute in some way to re-building our membership progressively in the coming years.
Club Facilities
We have replaced the net on court 1 and will be replacing them all in the next week or so. We are looking to repaint courts 1 – 3 in the next couple of months to smarten things up.
Club Survey
Thank to those of you who took the time to complete the Survey later last year. We’ve worked though all the responses to see what we can do to improve things at the club and we’ll send out a summary with our comments on what might be possible soon.
Other News
The winter leagues are almost complete and we’ve had some really good results in close leagues. The Ladies A team will be 2nd or 3rd in the Premier division, the B team will benefit from slipping down a league, the Men’s A team are in a really tight league and need a couple of good results from other matches to stay in League 1 and the B team have been promoted from league 3 as champions. The Mixed A team have won league 2 and the B team will have to wait until after the last game to see if they have been promoted.
My thanks to the captains for their hard work once again, Lyn Wright, Laura Evison, Peter Almond, Rupert Keith, Tony Hutchinson and Gill Saunders and of course Betty for the Surrey League ladies team.
Club Championship
This year the Club Champs are being run by Mike and Mhairi Peck. We are very keen to have a good entry this year and we want to encourage all first round losers to enter the Plate event to give everyone a chance to play at least twice. We are looking at a different format for the Plate and the Handicap Doubles competition to give more opportunities for less experienced players to play. More information will be sent out shortly.
Club Night
A combination of Hugh and Mike have continued to administer the new system of emailing availability for Thursday evenings which seems to be working well. If you want to get onto the roster let me know and I’ll pass your details on.
We are happy to look at alternative/additional evenings or weekends but it will require a volunteer to be the focal point for the communications each week, let me know if you’re interested in taking it on.
Wimbledon Ticket Draw
The Draw will be held at the club on Sunday 24th April at 5.00pm. More details will follow in a separate email.
Enjoy your tennis
Scott Tunbridge
Chairman
