West Cumbria Tennis League will be back in action next month with six member clubs looking to boost numbers ahead of the new season.
There are seven different leagues for the clubs to contest – two Mixed, two Ladies, two Men’s and one singles – with five of the clubs enjoying title success last year.
Whitehaven won the Mixed 1 League and the Men’s 2; Lorton won the Men’s 1 and the Singles while there were championships for Seascale (Mixed 2); Keswick (Ladies 1) and Maryport (Ladies 2).
Harrington were the only club to miss out on a title but with the lowest membership in the league they only contest the Men’s doubles League.
They have an enthusiastic, if aging membership, proud that the Harrington club has been going for 118 years.
Attracting younger players to the various clubs to take up tennis is the main target, and Cumbria Crack spoke with Graeme Lowrey, the new treasurer and membership secretary at the Whitehaven Community club to find out how they had gone about it so successfully 12 months ago.
He said: “Last season was a very successful one for the club overall. However, it didn’t start off that way. The club needed to grow its membership and become a successful and established tennis club once again.
“It either happened then or the club could have been looking at the possibility of folding in the very near future if nothing was done.
“The clubs committee had a slight overhaul and different people were brought in with some new drive and ambition to build the club’s profile. Meetings were held late on and very close to the start of the season so many things still hadn’t been ironed out by the time the club opened for business, but it had something to go off at least and run with.
“Certain people were tasked with getting the word out. With a new website, a new social media page, new posters being placed everywhere and anywhere that the club could put them, plus online publicity from Cumbria Crack and others, we got the word out there that Whitehaven still had an active tennis club and it was looking to boost its membership!
“The enquiries started coming in dribs and drabs, but then it soon got busier. We had them coming in from emails, Facebook messages, website contact page, word of mouth and tags on posts online. We had more and more interest in people wanting to come along to play tennis socially and also competitively. Importantly parents wanted to get their kids involved and get them along to coaching.
“Before the club knew it, the membership had already doubled from the previous season and it was only a month or two in. Certain people were working hard to push the club online as much as possible and promote it wherever they could.
“The club’s junior section had grown massively, from five junior members up to 37 by the end of the season which in large part was down to the club being able to secure a coach for the majority of the season.
“It wasn’t just the juniors though, by the end of the season the adult membership had gone from 33 the previous season up to 58. Roughly 17 different adults and the majority of the junior members took part in the coaching that was on offer each week.
“The social tennis sessions on a Monday night were regularly attended, some nights going up to 22/23 people at one point, but there was always a regular number of around 15/16 most weeks. Saturday mornings were also well attended and the club even put on some club tournaments for a bit of fun.
“All the hard work that the people put in to push the club to grow had finally paid off. The club finished the 2023 summer tennis season in a great position. Not only had the membership nearly tripled compared to the previous season, the finances were in a healthy position.”
Not only increased numbers and rosier finances, the club won its first silverware for a very long time as they won the Mixed 1st and Men’s 2nd Divisions.
One of the female members went on to represent the west league in an inter-league competition and came away as part of the winning team, and two of the club’s members went on to gain their Level 1 Coaching certificates in the hope that someday soon they could start their coaching careers.
Lowrey added: “Moving forward and looking ahead to the 2024 summer season, the club has entered more teams into the local league, with 2 mixed, 2 ladies, 3 men’s, 1 singles and for the first time in a long time, one junior team to play in a local junior league once that gets up and running.
“This enables the club to give more people a chance of playing competitive tennis should they wish and put into practice everything they have learnt at the club last season.
“The club has also taken the big decision to move venues to try and build on their achievements from last year.
“The club only plays for five months of the year and have done for some time; however, it wants to start playing all year round and while the club have thanked the Whitehaven Academy for accommodating them for the last three seasons it felt the move to the newer, bigger facility with the extra court at St Benedict’s School was the right choice.
“Venues for tennis clubs are very few and far between in the area. There is no land available to build the clubs own tennis courts like other clubs have and then there is the big issue of the money to pay for these courts too. So, the club has always had to look at what avenues it can go down in terms of getting the best for the club to achieve its potential, hence the big move for 2024.
“As for development and sustainability for the future, Whitehaven Community Tennis Club has invested money into getting an in-house coach through the winter months. One of the club’s regular members wanted to pursue her coaching career after making a start on it last season, so the club has paid around £1,100 to put her through everything she needs, so that come April she will be a fully fledged LTA Accredited Tennis Coach based at Whitehaven.
“This is a major breakthrough for a club, who for a long time, had to try and attract coaches to come into the club to enable them to have a junior section, and will be able to offer coaching at Whitehaven Community Tennis Club.”
The club has lots of plans for this season, from monthly in-house tennis tournaments, to monthly cardio tennis sessions which are fun outdoor exercise sessions with a bit of a tennis twist.
It is also going to look into the possibility of hosting a tennis tournament for the first time in ages that will hopefully be open to all of Cumbrian tennis players, not just in the west league.
So plenty of exciting times ahead for the Whitehaven club and what they have achieved over the last 12 months should offer encouragement, and ideas, for others in the West League to follow their example – and grow their clubs.
