Christmas 2022 - Newsletter

Greetings from our President Elaine Paige OBE

It’s such a pleasure to send you my festive greetings in our last newsletter of 2022. And how lovely it is to look back on a year of action after the pandemic caused such havoc in 2020 and 2021.

I hope you enjoy reading about all the tennis activity that took place this year – we were finally able to run our Golf Day and seeing Wimbledon back to full bloom and the very successful and popular wheelchair event was certainly a highlight. Reading about the success of our British players throughout 2022 has made me very proud and the disability tennis camps in partnership with the LTA were a great opportunity for other players.

2023 promises even more action with the return of our recreational doubles’ wheelchair event, our Golf Day taking place in a new venue (mark your diaries!) and some other partnership activities with the LTA which we will announce soon.

As you will see below, demand for our grant funding is once again at a record high. This is heart-warming as we see disability tennis programmes and players flourish. But on that note, life can’t be described as ‘back to normal’ just yet, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you it is a tough financial time for all of us, including the Trust. Therefore, as always, we ask you to keep the Trust in mind with any potential fundraising. As you will see below, there have been a variety of individuals who have come up with brilliant ways of fundraising for us. We really hope you are inspired!

All that’s left for me to say is that I hope you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday period and we look forward to your continued support in 2023.

Love,

Elaine's website

Disability Camps with the LTA

This year we were excited to partner with the LTA to run a series of tennis coaching camps for different categories of disability. The Tennis Foundation previously ran this style of camp for many years and the LTA approached us to see if we could help them revive these fun weekends.

Over the summer we ran a set of two day camps in Learning Disability, Wheelchair and Visually Impaired and Blind Tennis.  Later in the year we ran a second weekend camp for Wheelchair tennis and then one day camps for Visually Impaired and Blind Tennis. We received really positive feedback from players and their families and are working with the LTA to see if we can continue this project next year. You can keep an eye on our social media channels for updates and to see photos from the camps this year. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful coaches who gave their expert coaching to all the players, and to the players themselves for joining in.

Recreational Wheelchair Tennis Doubles event 2023 

We are thrilled to be planning our Recreational Doubles Wheelchair event once more! We will be returning to Gloucester and the Oxstalls Indoor Tennis Centre and Cheltenham Chase Hotel. We have the courts booked for the final weekend in April – Saturday 29 – Sunday 30 and accommodation reserved at the Cheltenham Chase Hotel for Saturday 29 April including a social dinner. Keep an eye on our social media channels or register your interest with Liz (liz@danmaskelltennistrust.org.uk)

For those who don’t remember, the weekend is a fun, doubles only event, where we will pair you up with random partners and make sure you play a lot of timed matches. The idea is for everyone to come together in a social and relaxed environment and play some tennis while having a great time. This year we hope to add a junior event and have already had a lot of interest in this. We are also proud to announce that the event will be named in honour of the late Cathie Sabin, using the donation her family so kindly gave to us in order to fund a lot of the event.

Golf Day 2023

Just another reminder that in 2023 we will be moving our annual Celebrity Golf Day to the RAC Club in Epsom, Surrey on Friday 16^th June. This day is one of our major fundraisers so is very important to the Trust. If you haven’t joined us before and would like more information about putting a team together (it is a great team building event for workplaces) then please contact us. For those previous entrants we will keep you updated with details throughout next year.

Donation from the Wimbledon Foundation

Once again we were delighted to receive a generous donation from the Wimbledon Foundation from their ticket resale scheme. This funding is so important to us and allows us to keep up with the record demand for our grant funding programme. 

If you would like to learn more about the wonderful work the Wimbledon Foundation does, you can visit their website.

Grant funding - another record high!

As mentioned above we have had another record breaking year in grants awarded in our funding programme. This year we have committed to fund over £100k to individuals and groups. This is up from £84k in 2021.

Fundraising initiatives

This year we have had some wonderful individuals running fundraisers for us. Our own Gilly ran a yard sale which then adapted to the 2022 lifestyle and continued on facebook marketplace. We also had an amazing donation from 10 year old Hettie who made and sold hair scrunchies. Wheelchair player Jack Wells has also been undertaking a few forms of fundraising for us including a % of sales from his own clothing range.

We hope that in 2023 more of you will come up with fun ways to help us raise funds.

Please also consider helping disabled people to play tennis by making a donation. There are a variety of ways to do this – for example Paypal and JustGiving and also other ways to give e.g. Amazon Smile, Easyfundraising, Work for Good, all of which can be accessed via our website. Even some energy companies, such as Shell will offer a donation to us if you are signed up through Easyfundraising. It's really easy to do and we even have a step by step video showing you how easy it is.

Ian Peacock becomes a Vice-President

At the final Trustees meeting of the year, Ian Peacock resigned as a Trustee and was unanimously invited to become a Vice-President.  Chairman Sue Wolstenholme in formally extending this invitation to Ian, commented that his wisdom and advice since the inception of the Trust had been invaluable.  Ian accepted the invitation and said he was delighted to have played his part in getting the Trust started and remaining loyal since. Ian’s wealth of experience in tennis included his roles as Managing Director of Slazenger and as CEO of the LTA.  He was also heavily involved in golf and remains the Life-President of the Tennis Industry Association. 

Other Trustees retiring in rotation were Lesley Cundy, John James and Noel McShane and all were re-elected for a further 3 year term of office from 1^st January 2023.

LTA Nationals and British Performance player wrap up

It’s great that this year the LTA were able to run the full complement of Disability Nationals events;

Deaf Nationals in September at the NTC, results here.

Learning Disability Nationals in November at Bolton Arena, results here.

Visually Impaired Nationals in November at Wrexham Tennis Centre, results here.

Wheelchair Nationals in December at the Shrewsbury Club, results here.

When we look across the winners of the many categories we are so pleased to see that most of the players have been supported by the Trust in the past 5 years.

On the performance side of things, it was another successful year for British Wheelchair Players  with the following players finishing the year in the top 20 World Rankings:  Alfie Hewett 2^nd and Gordon Reid in 14^th in Mens, Andy Lapthorne in 6^th in Quad and Lucy Shuker 7^th in Womens. Our Junior players have achieved astonishing results on the World Tour and in the Boys we have Ben Bartram in 2^nd, Andrew Penney 4^th, Dahnon Ward 5^th and Joshua Johns 6^th whilst in the Girls Ruby Bishop finished the year in 4^th and Ellie Robertson in 9^th.

In 2023 British Deaf Players and Learning Disability players will head to Australia to compete in International events tied to the Australian Open. We are proud to be supporting these players on their journey. Also in 2023 the World Blind Games will be held in Birmingham and we are looking forward to success from our strong British team.

Trustees Meeting dates 2023

The meeting dates for our 2023 Trustees Meetings have been set and can be found, along with the relevant closing date for each round of applications on our website.

Office update

The office will be closed for Christmas and the New Year from 22^nd December to 2^nd January 2023, reopening on Tuesday 3^rd January. In 2023 our office will generally be manned Monday – Wednesday.

May we take this opportunity to thank all our supporters of the disabled tennis community and to wish you a Merry Christmas and all the very best for the New Year.