Sport
19 December, 2022
Tennis club bouncing back with strong social support
The Maryborough Tennis Centre was able to complete the first half of the Wednesday night tennis season, with 10 teams getting to enjoy the social aspect of the sport, while also having fun and gaining fitness. The finals night for the first half of...
The Maryborough Tennis Centre was able to complete the first half of the Wednesday night tennis season, with 10 teams getting to enjoy the social aspect of the sport, while also having fun and gaining fitness.
The finals night for the first half of the season was played on Wednesday, December 7, with Team Federer, consisting of Lyndon Tait, Kerry Leech, Arthur Distinguin and Liam Vosnesenskis, able to defeat the Racquet Scientists in the final, winning 29 games to 15.
Maryborough Tennis Club president Heather Carr was thrilled with the turnout for the competition throughout the spring season.
“Last year, we came back after COVID and had six teams for our Wednesday night competition, and we were happy with that after starting in November. We weren’t sure what the take-up would be, so it was pleasing then to see people coming back to tennis,” she said.
“I did do a lot of phone-calling to make sure people would come back, so starting in October this year was able to yield 10 teams, but more importantly, we were able to get new people playing tennis. For example, we had a team of dental nurses playing. They hadn’t participated in our Wednesday night comp at all. That was pleasing for us in terms of people coming back to tennis.
“We have a list of emergency fill-ins as well, so with people who can’t make it on a Wednesday night, there are a lot of people who do want to have a hit of tennis.”
Carr said she was hoping the tennis club would be the recipient of more funding so that they could expand their competition further in the near-future.
“We’ve had a number of court issues previously, so we are trying to utilise what we have. We’re looking for major funding to upgrade our grass and hard courts at the moment. We’ve received some funding so far, but it’s not quite enough. Ten teams are where we have to draw a line at the moment, but if we had more courts, we’d be able to cater for a lot more teams than that,” she said.
Nevertheless, Carr is thrilled that the Wednesday night competition has been a success, with all teams looking to return when the season resumes in February — while it’s also had a big effect on potentially reinvigorating the Saturday competition which was halted in January this year.
“All of our teams have indicated they want to come back, and they can’t wait. We had a little break-up a couple of weeks ago and everyone loved it. We’ve got new people interested in coming and playing. We’re not sure of the numbers yet, but we’re working on that,” she said.
“We have got a few of our Wednesday night people already playing on Saturdays. We have reinvigorated some of the hard-court tennis association teams that have already been playing there on a Saturday afternoon there, which we’re trying to build up as well, using the Maryborough Tennis Centre as their centre base for playing tennis. We’ve been focusing on A grade teams and building that up.”
The competition will re-commence on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, with all enquires to be passed on to Heather Carr on 0400 498 056.