Tennis NZ plans to unveil big changes
Tennis New Zealand is closing in on filling the vacant chief executive’s role as the sport’s governing body continues working on a strategic plan, which is expected to be a game changer.
Steve Johns resigned from Tennis NZ just before Christmas, with Jamie Tong, head of participation and coaching, filling in in the meantime.
Unusually, the salary for the job was posted in the advertisement for the position, with the next CEO to be paid between $170,000 and $199,000. In all there were 32 applicants.
Tennis NZ chairwoman Celia Patrick said they received applications from a wide range of backgrounds.
‘‘Some are from overseas, most are from New Zealand,’’ Patrick said.
‘‘Some have a tennis background, some have a background in other sports and some have run big businesses.
‘‘We’ve got the 32 down to seven or eight and the recruiters are going to do interviews and dig really deep into those people.’’
Patrick says they hope to appoint a new CEO in May. In the meantime, Simon Rea, the former New Zealand Davis Cup player, who previously worked for Tennis Australia and coached Nick Kyrgios, will continue working on the performance side of Tennis NZ’s next strategic plan.
Rea has been with Tennis NZ since January, helping the country’s top players as well as looking at how the regions are bringing through younger players.
His current contract comes to an end in July and it’s unknown whether he’ll continue with Tennis NZ, or look for a coaching job overseas.
‘‘The main focus for Simon at the moment is that we want him working closely with our tennis community, our coaches and people in the performance space,’’ Patrick said.
‘‘We want to pull together a strategy that brings New Zealand’s performance and pathways into one overall way of looking at it.
‘‘Tennis NZ may still only deal with a few athletes and that’s still to be determined, but what we don’t have is a clear integrated plan of what regions should be doing and how that links to athletes coming through the funnel, to what we might be doing as a national body.
‘‘In the context of our discussions, we’re talking about what that means in the future for him [Rea].’’
The relationships between Tennis NZ and some of the six regions hasn’t always been good, with the reasons for this differing, depending on who you talk to.
Patrick says it’s imperative that the new strategic plan pulls everyone in the right direction, for the greater good of everyone involved in the sport.