Following a very successful 2010 season when 5 of our 9 teams gained promotion, 2011 was always going to be a season for stabilising in the higher leagues whilst club membership (thus availability of players) was slightly down on last year.
2011should, therefore, also be considered a successful season. Of our 5 promoted teams, 2 were unfortunately relegated back to whence they came, but will have learnt from the experience of playing at the higher standard and will all have improved as players.
The other 3 teams survived - just - in their higher divisions; the Mixed C leaving it to a nail biting last match win which actually lifted them to a very respectable 4th place finish in division 5.
The experimental Mixed D team, which we entered in division 6 in order to ‘blood’ some youngsters, was a marginal success in that we managed to play some young men every week which definitely improved their game and long term will benefit the club. Unfortunately, young ladies were harder to come by but we were able to keep the team running with the goodwill of our more experienced lady members.
We always welcome all new members, but would be especially keen to see more young ladies joining us so that we can continue to successfully field both ladies & mixed teams long into the future.
So please, if you can’t or don’t want to play league tennis yourself, ask your friends. Who knows they may just need a gentle shove to surprise themselves and become the next Maria Sharapova – but hopefully not as noisy.