Finals taking place this Saturday
2021 FINALS DAY
Our rescheduled finals day will take place this coming Saturday 23rd April. Ladies Doubles Finals will start proceedings at 12noon, Men’s Doubles final at 1pm and then Mixed Doubles tournament from 2pm with teams picked from a hat on the day. Refreshments will be provided.
Please come along to spectate, support or play in our mixed doubles tournament as we would love to see some new faces. There are representatives from Tallow, Ballyduff, Cappoquin and Lismore who have reached these finals, so hoping to see a big support from across our area!
EASTER CAMP
Two Easter Camps were held at the courts last week, split by ages. We had over 60 attendees and great sport was had at the courts, community centre and adjoining field. Thanks to coach Shelly and all her helpers. We hope to hold juvenile lessons and a summer camp so watch this space for details. We again are appealing for volunteers to assist on the juvenile side of the club and are calling on parents to make themselves available for 2 hours each fortnight to help out. Please email tennislismore@gmail.com
LISMORE TENNIS CLUB – AGM SNIPPETS
Our chairperson Conor Ryan began by welcoming all to the AGM, noting it was great to see the tennis club back up and running in Lismore. The club was most recently reformed during Covid in 2020 when tennis was one of the first sports with golf to be allowed to return. There has been a long history of tennis in the area and it was heartening to see so many members re-join this year along with lots of new faces and we really hope this trend continues into 2022 given it is the members who ultimately make a club.
Men’s & Ladies Intro Tennis / Come & Try Tennis Sessions / Positive Ageing / Her Outdoors / Get Active Lismore.
In association with Waterford Sports Partnership, various sessions either one-off tasters or some over a period of 4 weeks where equipment was provided and a qualified tutor took attendees through their paces with various fun taster intro sessions to tennis. These proved very popular with sessions generally booked out and the majority of attendees ended up joining the club after the sessions had finished up. Thanks to Peter Jones of Waterford Sports Partnership who was the West Waterford Hub Officer for their assistance with each of these sessions.
COACHING
The club organised weekly adult coaching lessons where Shelly took us through our paces and again these slots were fully allocated. It was great to see such a level of interest in these sessions and we all would agree it was plain to see improvements in lots of members game from these sessions. These coaching sessions were rounded off with an impromptu mini tournament at the penultimate weekend. Thanks to Becky for co-ordinating these, Shelly for the coaching and well done to all participants.
SUMMER LEAGUES
Once again we held both Men’s and Ladies Doubles summer leagues. There was great interest in these with over 30 participants across these leagues. Once again this year the competition was to a great standard with many close games/sets. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control we had to postpone the finals day and after this the weather and the shorter evenings along with Covid19 restrictions turned against us. It is hoped to run off these finals at the start of the upcoming season and we would like to thank Ellen for co-ordinating the ladies league and Kieran is co-ordinating the Men’s league – we don’t think there were too many disputed results or disagreements!
Social tennis nights were held each Thursday during the summer and on some Tuesdays although attendance on some evenings was small so wondering how we can address these social nights and entice more members to come and play together. We would appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks to the committee members who helped out on these social evenings.
JUVENILES
There was Trojan work done on the juvenile side of the club to get things up and running again. Jess Keane and Elaine O’Grady were appointed as our children’s officers with Padraig O’Neill recently assuming the role of designated liaison person. The club were delighted to be able to host weekly sessions throughout the summer, which culminated in a final fun session where everyone was a winner and all our participants took home medals! We hope everyone had fun and it was great to see juveniles back on our courts again. Well done to Andy, Jess, Elaine and Jen who helped with the kid’s sessions along with Coach Shelly. We would love if this is an area of the club we can grow and get more parents involved in helping to assist with it and interest is there with 50+ spots reserved on upcoming Easter camp.
COURT UPGRADES TO DATE
The club were extremely grateful to receive funding from Waterford Sports Partnership to install new nets and posts at the courts in 2021. We all would agree that these were badly needed with several repair jobs having been done over the years on the previous ones which were installed in the late 1980s. We engaged a contractor CourtCare to take care of this. Thanks to Andy for his work in getting this project over the line.
In addition the club received the Return to Sport Grant post Covid from WSP which we used to purchase equipment such as rackets and balls while we were also fortunate to receive €400 from Waterford County Council Community Grant and this was used to install a First Aid Box at the courts and assist with insurance costs. In December 2021 we were successful in receiving funding from the Dormant Accounts Initiative to purchase portable LED floodlights for the courts. This has allowed us to play during the evenings and there have been a number of sessions held. Thanks to Andy for his assistance in sourcing these and setting these up weekly.
COMMUNITY
During the summer we hosted the Super Capabilities Group who had great fun on the courts so thanks to all who helped out. The club came to an agreement with Blackwater Community School for the use of our facilities during school hours. This academic year their PE facilities are out of use at the moment with the ongoing extension works. The club are hosting Lios Mor Mochuda Primary School for coaching lessons from April for a period of 6 weeks. So it really is great to see life back on the courts.
SPORTS CAPITAL GRANT – 2022 DEVELOPMENT
A lot of work was involved behind the scenes in order to apply for the Sports Capital Grant whether it was trying to cajole local politicians, checking tax status, filling out umpteen forms, becoming members of Tennis Ireland, attending webinars etc. This process started back in Jan/Feb 2021 and culminated in us finding out in February 22 that our application to resurface our courts and associated ancillary works was successful to the tune of €50,000 – this will definitely be a game changer for our club and we will have facilities to rival many others with Tiger Turf surfaces (a form of Astro Turf).
FINANCES
We are in a very healthy position from a financial perspective and we believe that we are putting the club on strong foundations for the future. We appreciate the members contributions as well as the various grant funding we received. The committee was very prudent in terms of managing expenditure. I’d like to pay thanks to both Kieran and Mag for this. One note of caution, we are embarking on a development project with the resurfacing project and the aim would be that we do this without a need to take out bank/CU loans, so an amount of fundraising will be required. Various fundraising ideas were discussed. We will be looking for support from the local communities and businesses in this regard over the coming weeks .
ELECTION OF OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE
The following were elected to the 2022 Committee: Conor Ryan, Andrew Hamilton, Becky McCloskey, Padraig O’Neill, Mag Morrissey, Kieran Hayes, Ellen McCloskey, Craig Tobin, Jess Curnow, Elaine Hayes and Avril Doocey.
MEMBERSHIP
Fees for 2022 were agreed with slight increases on 2021 fees given the fact that the club will from this year, need to pay affiliation to Tennis Ireland for all members. Therefore a slight increase is needed to pay the additional cost to Tennis Ireland. We will be using Klubfunder to assist, so 2022 membership will become electronic. We will be in touch with members shortly once 2022 membership opens.