01/09/2009 - New Term Information (Loughborough LTC)

Hi everyone!

Hope you've all had a wonderful summer, we certainly have! We'd like to apologise for the lateness of the information coming out for this term but there have been a number of developments going on all summer and we've finally tied up some of the loose ends, enough to set our winter programme and explain some of them to you.

Coaching Team Additions

We're delighted to have added another coach to our team. His name is Matt Lowe and is one of the best young coaches in the country. Matt is currently Head Coach at Win Tennis's newly acquired academy facility at Graves Tennis Centre in Sheffield and has a great reputation in performance level tennis. Win Tennis is one of the premier tennis coaching groups in the country and run the prestigious Bisham Abbey facility. To begin with Matt will join us on Mondays only but we're still delighted to have him involved and think it’s a great coup for our team, proved by the negotiations we had to go through to get him!
We are also expecting to announce another part-time coach joining the team within the next week as we tie up the loose ends on this one and will let you know when we know more...
There will also be at least one other new face around the club this winter, Holly Reading, who is taking her Level 2 Coaching Assistant course at the university whilst we say goodbye to Dom Hassall who will be off to university elsewhere.

You may also be contacted by Alison Lancaster in future; she is helping us with some of our admin as we get busier, so if she does contact you on our behalf, at least you know who she is!

Programme

Another part of our long summer of negotiations has involved Tennis Midlands who run Loughborough Tennis Academy at the University. We've purchased their syllabus for the coming term in order to help our players lessons align with what's going on up the road. The syllabus is extremely professional and well put together and we think our players will get a lot from following the training plan that has been laid out. The syllabus information will be available on-line and in the clubhouse shortly we'd love everyone to take a look at. Obviously coaches will still be given plenty of license to coach in the way they are accustomed to as we think we have a great team at the club and trust their judgement completely, but we feel this new syllabus just gives us a little more continuity and makes it easier for players to move between groups as they progress.
The other side of our negotiations was for us to secure more court time at the university which we eventually did and allows us to accommodate many of the new faces we've met this summer!

Summer Camps

We had the best turnout in years for our 5 weeks of summer camps this year, with many new faces and also the best atmosphere we've enjoyed in recent memory! We were delighted with how they went and the number of players coming back for more than they'd originally booked for was testament to the hard work our team put in over the summer and we'd like to that all our coaches, assistants and players for making it such a success! For those who didn't come this year, we hope to see you on our camps in the future!

New Technology

We've been investigating new technology to bring into the programme this winter and we found what we were looking for in the shape of our new camera. With it we can film video footage of players in Super-Slow Motion providing stunning footage that most players never get a chance to see (we'd all have love to have had it when we were junior players!) and it allows players to see absolutely everything going on during their swing.
We've also found a way of providing each player with their own on-line folder where we can upload the video footage for players to analyse whenever they like, so as players get older they should be able to build up a collection of video footage of themselves and see exactly what they need to see in their own game.
You can see a video clip of what our camera is capable of on our new YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/insideouttennisuk

Martyn also has his own product on the market now, Skymount, a camera mount designed to help film tennis matches from the top of the fencing surround on tennis courts (and other sports areas) giving a high vantage point to show all the tactical and positional information that players need about their matches. You can find out more about it at www.skymount.co.uk.

Tournaments and Leagues

Our week-long Grade 4 event, the Inside Out Tennis Open, went well this year with a good turnout and plenty of positive feedback about Niall's refereeing skills over the week, so we hope we can have a few more of our own players entering next year and hand some trophies to them as well!
There will be a series of tournaments running through the year as per usual at our club and you can find more about these at www.insideouttennis.com in the tournament section.

There are also the club junior tournaments running week beginning 7th Sept and you need to contact Tony ASAP regarding these if you wish to enter! (www.loughboroughtennisclub.co.uk)

We will also be looking to re-launch internal league tennis at the club this winter (where players are placed in leagues with players from our club only and play against each other in matches that count towards their LTA ratings). We'd like to incorporate doubles as well as singles in the league as we feel doubles is being largely overlooked in junior competition at the moment.

Adult Tennis

Adult tennis will again be running on Saturday mornings throughout the term after the success of last term's lessons. There will just be 2 sessions to begin with, at 10am and 11am as after monitoring the summer terms sessions, we decided it best Jonny were involved in the 9am Junior Group again. As we add to our coaching team we'll also be investigating adding midweek sessions again to our programme. Sessions are still priced at £6 for non-members, £5 for members.

Membership

Juniors are reminded that in order to be involved in the coaching at the club they should be members of the club. Membership allows more than just coaching participation, with players able to get their own key from the membership secretary to come and play whenever they like when courts are available. The club also pays the entry fees for junior teams to leagues throughout the year from this membership money and it also pays for the upkeep of the dome and courts from these fees, so if the fees are not forthcoming it will just lead to a deterioration in club facilities in the long run.

We have been made aware that a number of players undertaking coaching are still not members, if you aren't sure on your junior membership situation, contact Tony Middleditch on 01509 215865

Volkl Rackets and Equipment

We've been working fairly closely with Quartz Sports this summer, who are based in Loughborough and import Volkl and Boris Becker brand rackets, clothing and other tennis related kit. We've never looked seriously into this kind of thing before as there have never been particular brands we've been happy enough with to promote but we've tried the Volkl rackets ourselves and have enjoyed using them and had good feedback from others who have. They now have a great mini tennis range too so if you're keen for advice on rackets etc then feel free to talk to us, we'll only recommend what we honestly think so no pressure from us to buy Volkl in particular. We have bag of rackets for you to try at the club so feel free to ask to borrow one if you want to try one out!

They also now supply us with strings for re-stringing, with all manner of types of string plus more importantly for kids in particular it seems they have almost any colour of strings too! Many re-string jobs can be matched to the colour of the racket frame or even have 2 different coloured sets of strings in the racket together, 1 running across, 1 up and down, so you can customise your racket!

Online Payment

After a busy summer and a few shopping cart issues we're unfortunately not going to be ready to take on-line payment this term. We're working hard and learning lots of computer coding to make sure that it's all good and ready for the term after in the New Year.

Finally

We look forward to another great term of tennis with everyone and hope you're all as giddy as we are about what we're working on for the future!

Regards,

Jonny and Martyn

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31/3/2009 Tournament Success - Press Release (see above)