By Graham Sievers, Conway LTC Chair

Until I was asked to write some brief details about the events we’ve held at our club this year, I hadn’t realised just how many and how broad a range we had already held. From a Valentine’s tournament through to a Silent Disco, we’ve included many different groups and communities within the club - and beyond.  

Based in a small park surrounded by housing, we hosted a street community-led Coronation day in May that attracted well over 400 people, and raised some £2,000 for a mixture of local charities and our own outreach programmes. Bringing non-members to the club and its grounds was both good for building positive connections with our neighbours, and promoting the club too.

We’ve held several ‘Club Cuisine’ nights, including Fish and Chips and Curry themes, to encourage better attendance at one of our less busy social tennis evenings, and run Family Tournaments where a junior plays with a parent, guardian or adult in a fun ‘fast doubles’ format. Quiz nights are often complete sell-outs. Our monthly American Tournaments are also popular, and if they fall on a suitable day, we introduce a novel theme – during the French Open, everyone had to call the score only in French, during the US Open, we supplied Hershey kisses and Jello. During Wimbledon, we asked everyone to attend in a whites-only kit –needing a few members to borrow others' cricket clothes.  

Roses are red, Violets are blue, if you don’t have a partner we’ll find one for you

Injecting some novel innovations helps to keep the events fresh and fun. For the Valentine’s Day Tournament, held in the evening, we were running out of time, so our resourceful tournament organiser amended the penultimate round with players rolling dice to determine their starting scores. This was a great leveller, and so many people loved the idea, we had requests asking if they could include it at other competitions!  

Who need's padel? Introducing frying pan tennis to the UK

For an exhibition match during the Coronation event, our Head Coach took on all-comers– playing against them with a frying pan.

This Halloween we are running a spooktacular around the park, with a strong witches’ brew for the adults.

Making sure we encourage more volunteers to help out can be challenging, but it is delightful to see ‘new’ volunteers take on responsibilities and organise activities, either in part or taking on the whole shebang. The feedback from members is very rewarding.

All in all, we don’t see events as separate from the tennis activities, but an integral part of club life, that  help make the club live up to its ethos –striving to be a vibrant, friendly tennis club welcoming people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. 

Wimbledon Dress Code for our monthly American Tournament, 2nd July