Elliswick LTC Newsletter – February 2019

Dear Members,

Welcome to our February Newsletter. The spring has finally sprung at Elliswick LTC. With a nice warm winter sun shining on our courts and the blooming daffodils in our clubhouse garden, it’s a perfect setting for keeping fit and carrying on playing tennis. Please do try to attend and support our social tennis mornings to improve your shots and to socialise with other members with tea/coffee and biscuits/cakes afterwards. Players of all standards are very welcome to join in – just turn up and play. The social tennis mornings are on Tuesdays (Ladies morning), Thursdays (Mix-in), both days starting from 9am, and Saturday and Sunday mornings (Mix-in) from 10am. It would be great to see more of our members joining in our ever so friendly social tennis.

Again, we would like to invite any members who would like to play in a team and/or to be considered as a team captain for any of our teams, please do not hesitate to register your interest by contacting Simon Lowe at [email protected] for Men, Victoria Aitchison at [email protected] for Ladies or Eric Rovick at [email protected] for mixed teams.

Club Tournament

The Elliswick Closed Club Championships 2019 will be soon upon us and will be held on Saturday 29 June 2019. The sign-up sheets for each category will go up on the club-house notice board on 1 March 2019 for those members wishing to enter. The closing date for entries is Sunday 31 March 2019. The draw will be published on 5 April 2019 by email to all members and dates will be set out for each category indicating when each round needs to be played by. All matches up to and including the semi-final stage are to be played between 6 April 2019 and 25 June 2019.

Our new Tournament Secretary is Louise Behan and if you are unable to sign up at the club-house, please send an email to [email protected].

Clubhouse and Grounds

You will have seen that the clubhouse roof is completed and the underfloor heating and floor have been installed. We have been delayed by issues with the geometry of the building, which gave us considerable difficulty building the roof supports. Those issues are now resolved. We hope to finish the building work in early April.

The bar area will be the next to be addressed, this will mean that we will have to close the bar for a month while the work is done.

Abacus has been contacted again about the floodlight, they assure us that they are doing their best to find someone with the right skill set to fix the mast. The issue is mechanical, and we are unusual in using this type of mast, most clubs have fixed arrays. Our planning permission is based on retractable lights.

Team Tennis

Ladies tennis

Winter Vets Tennis:

40A’s have two matches left to play and are mid division.

40B’s have one match to play and are currently top of division.

50A’s have one match to play and are mid division.

50B’s have one match to play.

60A’s and 60B’s have played all their matches and both are top of division.  Well done ladies and best of luck for remaining matches.

Ladies Ladder – these matches are being played with movement of pairs both up and down.  Don’t forget to be challenging if you are on the singles ladder too. It’s fun to play so if you haven’t challenged anyone yet now is the time!

Ladies Team Coaching – the 3 coach led sessions start next weekend.  Team captains will have emailed dates and times to their players for both the Herts League and Hot Rackets teams.  For any new or existing members who would like to be considered for team tennis please email [email protected].

Ladies Nights – these will start on Wednesday nights after the clocks go forward at the end of March.  To get an idea of how many ladies will be playing Victoria sends out an email twice a week.  Once to get an idea of numbers and again on the day before or morning of Wednesday so ladies know how many will be turning up to play.

Men’s Tennis.

Winter Vets matches are progressing. Our 45A team won their first match of the season with a convincing 5-0 victory over Letchworth. With two matches left to play this gives them a decent opportunity to retain their Championship status.

There are no fresh results for the 45B team since the last update and they remain 5th out of 7 in Div 2A.

The 45C team are still searching for their first points of the season in Div 4A with their latest result being a 5-0 defeat by top of the table Codicote but the exposure for some players experiencing match tennis for the first time will be invaluable.

Singles Ladder will go live on 1st March. Simon Lowe has now had a number of entries but would still like more. The format is best of 13 games with a 7 point tie break at 6-6. If you’re interested then please provide Simon with your name, mobile and email contact details. He’ll be determining who starts where on the ladder to begin with but after 1st March new entrants will start at one place only……the bottom, so please get in touch ASAP. It should be a laugh….

Maybe it’s been the fantastic recent weather but Summer League matches are just around the corner. As Simon said in his last update with changes in team captains being considered, he is looking for expressions of interest from players who have previously represented our 4th and 5th teams to come forward and take a turn at captaining the teams. The matches don’t arrange themselves and it would be very much appreciated for someone new to step up and take a turn. Fixtures meeting is on the 7th March and each team needs a representative to attend so if you are interested please contact Simon ASAP.

With the summer teams in mind the dates for Mens team Practice sessions have been set. These are led by the club coaches and offer an ideal preparation for team tennis in terms of shot selection and tactics. Simon is not only looking for established team players to attend but also those who wonder whether their standard of play merits selection. If in doubt come along, otherwise we’ll never know! All are welcome.

Dates are:

Sunday 10th March 10am – 1pm

Saturday 16th March 3pm – 6pm

Sunday 24th March 1pm – 4pm.

He’ll be more specific in terms of timings in due course, but he’d be very grateful if those planning to attend could email him beforehand so that we have an idea of numbers.

Simon Lowe contact email is [email protected] so please feel free to get in touch regarding any of the subjects highlighted above or for any issue relating to Mens Tennis.

Mixed Team Tennis

The East Herts Winter Mixed League is running its course, with another month and a half left to go in the season. Most of our 7 ELTC teams still have multiple matches to play, so we have no clear divisional winners/losers yet.

The Datchworth Summer League commences on Monday 22nd April and runs for 14 consecutive Monday evenings. This year we plan to, like last year, enter 3 teams.

Membership

Thank you to everyone who has paid their membership fees.  The deadline for doing so is this Thursday, Feb 28th. From March 1st, Sally will begin allocating places to some of the 280 people on the waiting list.

The new shoe tags will be available from the clubhouse by mid-March. Please remember to collect them and make sure you always wear them when playing at the club.

Socials

If anyone has a child who would like to raise funds for a charity or special challenge, they are very welcome to sell bacon/sausage rolls on a Saturday morning for our members.  Please contact Jeanette Rickerty at [email protected] to register your interest.

Do you love cooking?  We are looking for people to cook our most popular Thursday night suppers on the following dates:

April 25, May 23, August 8th, September 5th. Please contact Jeanette if you are interested to do so.

New dates for your diaries:

Ladies Prosecco Evening 15 May

Dinner dance 20 July

Comedy night 16 November

All dates are posted on the notice board and on the website.

Juniors

Junior Night

We are looking forward to welcoming the start of the Junior Nights on Friday 5th April.  The bar will be open and hopefully it will be the start of many evenings of basking in the sunshine.

3:30-6pm is for the Young Juniors, who must be accompanied/supervised by a parent or adult.

6-8pm is for the older Secondary Age Juniors who do not need to be accompanied, and we operate a rota system of adult volunteers to help supervise.  This session can only go ahead if we have adequate volunteers so we would like ask if you can please help supervise to ensure the sessions go ahead.  Please email Deborah Temple at [email protected] or you can enter your name on the rota on the Junior board.

Juniors – Programme of Progression

We are currently discussing how we can help our Junior club members progress their tennis and team playing. We wish to promote fairness of play and opportunities across all the age groups and levels of play.  We are looking at inner club games, coaching and also progression to external championships.  This is work in progress and Deborah will update you in due course.

Junior Annual Tournament

The tournament this year will be held on Sunday 15th September with a reserve date of 22nd September.  Please reserve in your diary – details will follow nearer to the time.

Kind Regards

Elliswick LTC Committee

PS, Don’t forget to keep up to date with events at our website http://www.elliswickltc.co.uk