CHAIR’S REPORT 2015
Firstly I would like to welcome all the members present and thank them for
attending our AGM. This has been another busy year and I would like to
take this opportunity to review the developments and look forward to the
future.
I have been Chair for 18 months now and I am happy to continue for
another year as I am fortunate to be involved with a very hard working
committee whose members support each other and are a pleasure to work
alongside. I would like to take this opportunity to publically thank the
Committee for their commitment and dedication organising all the various
parts of our Club and enabling it to run efficiently and smoothly.
I would just like to use this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Mark
Taber who is stepping down and introduce and give a warm welcome to
Sarah-Jane Streatfeild-James on taking up the position of Club Secretary.
The good news is our club is thriving. We have increased the numbers of
Juniors and Minis (Under 10s) and Adults playing League, We have also
extended the breadth and depth of our Tennis programme for both Juniors
and Adults alike. The courts, grounds and Clubhouse are well maintained;
all in all it’s a great place to play tennis.
COACHING
Mike Kopacki our Head coach manages a dynamic and enthusiastic team
of coaches. He has extended the Tennis programme introducing more
appropriate age and ability Junior , Mini and Adult groups. For the Juniors
and Minis he has increased the number of sessions and has introduced
performance groups for various ages. For adults he runs ‘Open’ free, turn
up and play sessions on Tuesday evenings, and on a Wednesday
mornings he offers the added incentive of coffee and cake to encourage
new and ‘rusty returner’ players . At present he is running pre season
coaching for the Adult league teams, Mens training on Monday evenings
and Ladies on Wednesday evenings.
In order for Mike to extend the Tennis Programme he has enlarged our
hard working Coaching Team recruiting Matt Everett (a previous member)
and Dan Burgess (new member) who have joined our existing committed
Team of Nathan Hawkins, Sally Kingston, James Baber, Sue Lewis,
Sophie Webb, Adrian Davis and Tom Warren.
Very sadly Duncan Grew, a previous senior member of our coaching team
has left our club as he no longer has the time to devote to coaching
because he works full time in another career. He will be very much missed
by his former pupils and also the Men’s First Team as a major contributor
to their success. We wish him all the very best in the future.
THE TENNIS FORUM
This was set up 18 months ago to help support, monitor and develop all
aspects of our Tennis programme. It is made up by representatives of all
our various groups. It is lead by Lyn Jones our league fixture secretary,
Sue Lewis and Nicola Kerr our Welfare officers, Mike Kopacki Head Coach,
Mark Taber (Tennismark ) Suzanne McDonald parent captain for years and
now club sportswear manager, Nick Phillips our Parent captains and
myself. The Forum meets regularly to discuss the current tennis
programme, management of all the League teams, and future development
of all the different aspects of tennis at our Club. The aim is to provide a
comprehensive Tennis Programme that is inclusive, welcoming and
encouraging for all our members to play and enjoy tennis to their full
potential. It enables those members that wish to attain higher standards of
tennis to compete at the appropriate level with clear transparent pathways
in to our many teams. The forum also wants to ensure those who wish to
play friendly arranged fours can continue to do so.
I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you on behalf of our
members for all the hard work of the Forum members thus enabling our
players to take part in all the various competitions and tennis activities we
have on offer at our club.
Tennis events throughout the Year
GBTW EVENT / OPEN DAY 18th May:
This was our first time joining in with the LTA led GBTW to help promote ‘
‘Tennis for All’ combining it with our Open Day for members and non
members, creating a fun day of many tennis activities for all including ‘beat
the coach’ , longest rally, free play and introducing Cardio Tennis. Nearly
200 people young and old took part and enjoyed the various tennis
activities available and of course the delicious BBQ and refreshments
including scrumptious cakes, all kindly donated by members of our Ladies
League Teams.
On behalf of the Committee I would like to thank all our wonderful
volunteers who worked tirelessly helping on and off court, making our event
so enjoyable and successful. Not forgetting Mike who organised all the
tennis activities with his team of coaches who managed to keep the
enthusiasm going for all 3 hours on court, no mean feat. We had an Avon
LTA representative supporting the GBTW who dropped in to see our event,
he was very impressed with all he could see, and complimented us on the
lovely atmosphere and the number of happy people of all ages taking part
and enjoying the activities, enabling us to achieve our aim to promote
'Tennis for all'.
We will be hoping to recreate this event on Sunday 17th May this year.
CLUB TOURNAMENT FINALS DAY 7th SEPTEMBER
This is a big day in our year where the winners of the summer long knock
out tournament compete to win one of our great trophies.
We were very fortunate to have a glorious warm sunny day to enjoy
watching some superb tennis from all age groups of our Junior and Senior
sections of our club. The matches were all of a very impressive standard,
closely fought but with great sportsmanship displayed from the young and
not so young. Gareth Collier (Treasurer) managed to secure a donation
from Barratts which covered the cost of all our trophies and help pay for
their engraving.
Our Men’s Singles trophy was badly damaged, we sent out a request and
very generously Roz Laporte donated our new trophy as a memorial to her
husband Keith who died suddenly last year, we are very proud that he will
be honoured in this way as he was a keen sportsman.
55’s AND OVER MIXED TOURNAMENT – FONDLY KNOWN AS THE
‘OLD GITS’
On a hot, sunny day back in July, 18 players - all over 55 - took part in the
Annual Mike Browning Tournament, familiarly known as the Old Gits. It was
organised by Keith Beeton on a Round Robin basis where every player
played everyone else accumulating individual points along the way. After
an excellent morning’s play for all, Lynne Browning, Gareth Collier, Max
Childs and Phil Collins made it through to become the four semi- finalists,
with Max and Phil coming out as eventual winners. It was a fun day of
competitive tennis much enjoyed by all. It would be great to see more
members participating when it is staged next summer.
Successful Mulled wine and American Mixed Tennis Tournament on
21st Dec.
Lyn Jones organised a most enjoyable and well attended Tournament with
fun competition to the fore. Players drew a number and played with
different partners with the winners collecting the most points. Some felt that
the mulled wine affected their game mostly for the better, myself included.
Many thanks to all those who took part in organising this event and
providing delicious festive goodies. Lyn will organise more similar American
Tournaments during 2015.
Santa’s Delivery of B.S.T.C Hoodies
In December Mark Taber organised a timely order of BSTC hoodies
enabling Santa to deliver these for Christmas which meant many junior,
adults and coaches started the New year proudly wearing royal blue
hoodies with our club logo, a really heartening sight. Many thanks to Mark
for arranging this and who has now handed over the managing of orders to
Suzanne Mc Donald who is in the process of putting in a new order.
LEAGUE TEAM NEWS.
Junior Leagues
Mike entered 8 summer and 5 winter junior teams last season.
With the help of coaches and parent captains we managed to complete
every match and our u12 boys, u16 girls and u16 Boys teams won their
leagues.
Congratulations to all our Juniors who took part, great work.
Our youngest players in 8&under, 9&under and 10&under categories were
not competing to win the leagues but to gain experience, therefore instead
of using only the strongest 4 players for all the matches we allowed anyone
who showed interest to take part, to make sure everyone was given a
chance to experience the match day thrill.
In total we had over 50 different children playing matches for Bishop Sutton
TC, and this year we are looking to almost double these numbers making
sure children as young as 6 year old get a chance to play.
Special thanks to team captains: Nick Phillips (12&U boys), Lucy
Moorhouse (14&U boys) and Vanessa Knight (16&U boys)
who work hard to manage, arrange, support and transport their teams.
Abi Rees-Jones wins our JUNIOR ROAD TO WIMBLEDON Tournament
The annual Under 14 Road To Wimbledon tournament was one of our
highlights in 2014 due to the exceptional performances of one of our girls
Abi Rees-Jones. First, she won our club RTW competition and therefore
qualified for the county RTW tournament. She went on to win this without
dropping a set! This meant that she qualified for the national competition
which is actually played at Wimbledon itself a truly wonderful achievement.
Unfortunately she was to unable to attend but we would like to congratulate
her on her success for progressing to such a high level in this tournament.
On finals day this triumph was acknowledged when she won ‘The most
Improved Junior ‘award for 2014.
ADULT LEAGUE
The 2014/15 saw another very busy season for the adult league teams. We
had 8 adult teams playing the Avon LTA Summer league with a grand total
of 64 players taking part from the club. This is a great commitment and I
would like to thank all the players and captains. The summer league
requires 32 BSTC players every Friday for the 10 week season so it is both
a feat of organisation and endurance!
Ladies :
Our 1st team ladies stayed up in division 2 which is great results for the
club. Sadly the 2nd and 3rd teams both faced some tough opposition and
were relegated to divisions 4 and 5 respectively and the 4th team (new last
year) were promoted again also to division 5. The ladies continue to
practice throughout the year on Weds and Sunday evenings and have
goals for the 2015 summer season which include getting the 2nd and 3rd
teams back up again!
Mens :
The men also had a tough season with the 1sts and 2nds finishing 5th in
their divisions and going down from division 1 and 4 despite some great
tennis. The 3rds narrowly missed promotion and so like the 4ths will remain
in Divisions 7 and 8 respectively. We welcome 3 new captains for the 2015
summer season and also have men's pre-season coaching Monday
evenings.
Mixed League:
The winter season which is played in a mixed format had some great
successes this year. The Vets team won Division 1 which is fantastic
achievement and puts them at the top of the tree! The 1st team missed out
on winning division 4B by 2 points and the 2nd team played some great
tennis and finished 4th in division 4D. All round a great result for the club.
So we look forward to the summer 2015 season and are actively
encouraging as many BSTC members to play as possible!
CLUB REWARDS and A FEW THANK YOU’S
The Committee wish to take this opportunity to reward certain members of
our club who we think have given ‘above and beyond’ for the benefit of our
club. We have thought long and hard and wish to award:
Chair’s Award – Nick Dell - 1 pair Wimbledon tickets for all his hard work
sorting the legal aspects of our club and changing our Trustees , involving
a lot of time and effort all given freely to the club.
Committee Award - Shaun Green , stepping down as Social event / club
tournament organiser in recognition of his hard work for the club.
Members award – Nick Phillips – Parents U12 captain and Forum member,
supporting junior teams for several years
Special Award – Jane Heeley: 1years free Single membership, given as
recognition of her 15 yrs of dedication as Ladies and 1st Team Captain
Special Award – Harry Connell for his many years of hard work and
dedication given to the club as Chief grounds man and Committee
member.
Special Award – Alistair Gibson for his work as Honorary Club Auditor for
many years :1 pr Wimbledon tickets
Special Award – Duncan Grew – Senior Coach leaving after several years
of coaching at our club, he will be sadly missed by many of his pupils and
members of the Mens 1st team as a major contributor of their success.
We wish him all the very best in the future: Token
A special THANK YOU to Mark Taber who is stepping down as Club
Secretary- he has done a lot of hard work for our Club helping with the
Tennismark, our website, IT, Sportswear , helping Ladies 3rd and 4th teams
and also working hard at our events. He will be continuing on the Forum as
a non Committee member.
A big thank you to Max Childs who is stepping down from assisting Keith
Beeton as Groundsman.
Special Award – Annie Sewart for many years removing all our recycling
every week. Gardening token
Sally-Ann Eggington – Sorting our ever changing Booking sheets each
week : Gardening token
We also wish to thank Fleur Wilcox for doing a great job cleaning our
Clubhouse every week and her husband Justin who cleans the windows.
(Just to confirm all members who are awarded Wimbledon tickets have to
pay for them themselves).
Last But Not Least :
Last year our Committee’s aims were
Improve lines of communication. We have done our best with regular
newsletters by email, posters in the clubhouse, improving our website,
introducing regular twitter updates and Facebook .
Promote and develop our Tennis Programme to encourage new and
retain members, which we have done by extending and improving our
tennis programme for juniors and adults.
Encourage more members to join our team of volunteers: this is work
in progress and we shall continue to make this one of our main aims for the
coming year.
New Aim
To investigate further ways to use I.T. to help with day to day running of the
club for example Membership management, subscription payment and
possibly court bookings . David Tonkin has kindly agreed to look into the
LTAs package called Clubspark to see if it is suitable and cost effective for
our club, many thanks David.
As I said at the beginning our club is thriving. We have excellent well
maintained courts and clubhouse facilities. We have enthusiastic hard
working coaching team inspiring the young and not so young alike. We
have a large membership. All of our Committee are volunteers. Our aim as
a committee is to continue to strive to maintain and improve our club to
enable our members young and not so young to play at the level they wish
to and provide a Tennis Club to be enjoyed by all. To coin a phrase ‘our
future looks bright’.
Hilary Cripps, Chair