Junior Newsletter June 2010

From Tennis

Thames Ditton Junior Update—June 9th 2010

Great News: we have a thriving Junior section at Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club and evidence of this is a significant turn-out in excess of 30 juniors on a Friday evening mix-in for the last six weeks. A big thankyou must go to our own club coach Peter Light and the coaching team from Marc Codling for making this so successful.

Additionally, we are now near to concluding our various age group fixtures (24 in total) within the Surrey Aegon Team Tennis Leagues for boys and girls U18, U16 and U14 boys and despite more losses than wins, this has been a success and next year we anticipate we will enter more teams across the age groups. Thank you to all the parents that have helped so far, in particular Sue Hawkings for supporting the U14 girls and U16 boys. We did also enter an Under 8 ‘Thames Ditton Tigers’ team into a local competition which was a good start for this level and thanks go to Stuart Charlton (non-playing parent) for his help here.

What next?

We have the TDLTC Club Junior Knockout competition scheduled to start within the next week or so for U18’s, U15’s and U12’s age groups. Listed further below are the Juniors we know about that are going to be entered into the draw, eligibility primarily through their membership application. If your son/daughter is not listed below and they wish to enter, please advise back with their age group to tdltcjuniors@googlemail.com before Sunday 13th June this weekend. If your son or daughter is not yet a member, you will contacted by the membership secretary, Chris Lewis, after entry.

We would point out the age group allocation is a combination of age and then more importantly by ability to compete in that age group. We are seriously short on Under 12 entries to date, so please don’t be shy.

For those Juniors of a younger age or ability that are not yet comfortable to enter the Club Junior Knockout, there are plans to run a one-off Saturday afternoon Junior ‘Timed Tennis’ Competition in July, so that all Juniors will have had the chance to compete. More to follow at a Friday mix-in on this.

In July, based upon the feedback of the Club Junior Knockout Competition, the aim will be to launch at least two rounds of age based ‘Junior Box Leagues’ to run through July and over the summer. Should this prove successful, we will continue as an ongoing year round Junior programme.

One other event we have scheduled is a Junior BBQ at the club to get all the Juniors together and to get to know all the new members we have. After several false starts choosing a date, Saturday 26th June at 1.00pm is the proposed date, subject to weather. After the BBQ—just £2 per head—we anticipate various junior club knockout matches can be played on the grass and hard courts until 4.00pm.

TDLTC Entries to date:

Under 18 Boys

• Chris Baller
• James Banham
• Michael Eldrige
• Tim Francis
• Alex Hawkings
• Robert Hutton Attenborough
• Oscar Lewis
• Neil McClean
• Paul McClean
• Tom Morey
• Henry Rowley
• Jeremy Suckling
• James Williams

Under 18 Girls

• Beth Baxter
• Hannah Bracewell
• Sophie Meatyard
• Alison Thomson

Under 15 Boys

• Jonnie Bird
• Ben Bracewell
• Laurie Evans
• Alan Hutcheson
• Nathan Ive
• Trystan John
• Josh Lloyd
• Harry Meatyard
• Ethan Payne
• Nicholas Reyner
• Charlie Skirrow
• Syd Trengrove

Under 15 Girls

• Victoris Banham
• Olivia Francis
• Lizzie Hawkings
• Ana Hutcheson
• Lindsey Powrie
• Annie Suckling

Under 12 Boys

• Sebastien Collins
• Ivan Rea

Under 12 Girls

• Anna Hutcheson
• Alexandra Reyner