Winter tennis is unlikely to return

TENNIS Geelong is all but resigned to having no competition in winter because of increased restrictions amid the coronavirus crisis.

Summer competitions came to a halt earlier this month, meaning Leopold and Waurn Ponds were crowned winners of the 2019-20 Section 1 men’s and mixed seasons respectively.

But while clubs have been asked to submit their teams for a potential winter competition, Tennis Geelong president

Donna Schoenmakers said it seemed highly unlikely a season would get under way by the start of May.

“We (recently) requested that clubs put in their teams for winter, just because we weren’t sure how things were going to progress, but in the last week there has been a whole lot more information come out,” Schoenmakers said.

“We haven’t made a firm decision yet. We want to wait until after the first week of the holidays to see where things sit and go from there.

“The winter season isn’t due to begin until the start of May, so we have a few weeks up our sleeve and the committee is still trying to look at getting grading done remotely.

“But in light of what has happened in the past few weeks, I suspect we are going to end up having a shortened season for winter.”

Tennis Geelong will make a decision around whether its midweek season, which is on hold until April 14, will continue at a later date. But Schoenmakers said there were some unique concerns with that competition.

“It is still up in the air what we do for our midweek season.

“We are about halfway through, but we have particular considerations around that because 30 per cent of our midweek ladies are over the age of 60. So that is a very critical one for us to keep an eye on because we know that the age group with the biggest health risk in relation to coronavirus is people above 70.

“We haven’t made any firm decisions yet (about cancelling the season), but we continue to have discussions around how we move forward.”