Junior Co-Ordinator’s Report 2006/07

 

I have great pride as Junior Co-Ordinator once again announcing what a successful year Blackwood Tennis Club Juniors have had  culminating in 11 of our 25 Junior Summer teams playing in Grand Finals this weekend with the opportunity to win a premiership.

 

The winter season saw a slight decrease in teams from the 10 teams the previous winter having 8 teams in total, 4 boys and 4 girls.  Of the 4 boys teams 3 reached the finals but unfortunately were eliminated without reaching the Grand Final.  The Division 1 boys team struggled and finished 6th.  The girls Division 1 team completed a successful season by reaching the Grand Final and were runners-up. The girls Division 5 finished 4th the Division 7 8th and the Division 8 5th. Overall although no premierships were won, the players enjoyed their tennis and several players new to the game have continued on with the club during summer. 

 

Again I would like to sincerely thank Paul Nicholas for his valuable work in organizing and co-ordinating the winter tennis at Blackwood Tennis Club and attending the SDTA meetings during winter and am pleased to say that Paul is busy getting the teams organized again for the coming winter season thanks Paul.

 

The summer season again commenced with try-outs and good numbers again coming along enabling us to field 25 teams. We had 50 girls playing in 10 teams and 68 boys in 15 teams this summer. Six of the 10 girls teams made it into the finals and 13 of the 15 boys, we are now left with 3 girls teams and 8 boys teams playing this weekend in the Grand Final.  This is a great result and one the club should be truly proud of.  Most of the girls teams this summer ran with a team of 5 and had very few injuries or sickness which made the girls co-ordinator very happy with less hassles than in previous years.  The boys on the other hand had a lot of teams with only 4, caused by some injuries at the start of the season and some late withdrawals hence causing some more stressful weeks for the boys co-ordinator.  On that note I would like to sincerely thank Eric Lundborg and Rob Hayes for the tireless hours of work they both put in throughout the season.

 

 

We again ran a very successful Junior Club Tournament this year and I would like to thank all the sponsors associated with the  Tournament for their continued support enabling us to present to the players fantastic trophies for their efforts and to all the winners and runners-up, congratulations and well done. To everyone who entered whether you where a winner or not just to be a part of such a successful tournament makes you a winner.  Special mention once again must go to John Collett our reliable BBQ cooker who we can always rely on and just very quietly goes about making sure we all get well feed during the tournament and also on some of the occasional Saturday mornings that we have a Barbie as well.  Thanks John without quiet little achievers like you we would all go hungry.

 

Thank you to our coaches Jeff Fisher and Peter Broughton who put in many hours coaching our Juniors.  This year we have made more coaching available to the teams as group coaching and many of the teams have taken advantage of this and the success is shown by those teams now playing in the Grand Final.  We then also organised extra coaching for the teams during the finals I think this has been of great benefit to the teams and hopefully those rewards will be reaped on Saturday.  I hope we can build on this team coaching even further next year as I see it as an important part of our Junior’s future.

 

To all the Juniors from Blackwood who participated in the SDTA Inter Association teams thank you being prepared to participate and represent our club at Association level.  Also to all the players from Blackwood who participated in the SDTA Junior Tournament that was held prior to Xmas well done and congratulations on entering this tournament. I know that we also had quite a few players that where successful in their events so to those players congratulations on winning.

 

To Garry and the committee I would like to thank you also for the wonderful support that is given to the Juniors at Blackwood and  to the parents and carers of our Juniors who get them to the club each week and make themselves available to take their turn as Supervisors and also on the canteen roster thank you also.

 

Finally I would just like to reiterate some of the things I said at the Junior Wind-up a couple of weeks ago where we had one of the best turn outs ever.  Firstly I must thank one of our major sponsors in Savings and Loans Credit Union who I omitted to mention that night which was very remiss of me as they are a very valuable sponsor of our Juniors and we hope they will continue to do so for many years to come.  Our wind-up this year was a fantastic night and so great to see so many of our Juniors and their parents in such a relaxed and fun atmosphere. I said on that night how much satisfaction you can get as a parent to be involved in such a successful and great club just to see these kids playing tennis and doing so well can give you such a big thrill that I do encourage anyone to become involved even in just a small way to contribute to the continued success of this club.  I am happy to continue on next year as Junior Co-Ordinator and I know that Rob is prepared to go on for another year as Boys Co-Odinator and I think Eric is but we need some parents to now step forward and be prepared to take on maybe an assistants role with these people to learn the ropes so that in the coming years we have new parents willing to take over continue on in these roles.  So please give it some thought you don’t necessarily have to be on the committee initially just put your hand up to learn and I am sure you will get some great satisfaction out of seeing these kids succeed and have some great fun along the way.

 

 

Kaye Lewis

Junior Co-Ordinator