Crickhowell Tennis Club
Chairman’s reportfor 2016/17 at AGM on 26th April 2017
We have a Vision as you know. This is it…
“We are a thriving, well run and progressive Tennis Club which our members (children as well as adults) enjoy belonging to.
Our focus is on encouraging members to improve their game.”
Our objectives for 2016/17 were to build on the successes of the previous year in the context of this Vision, but still in the shadow of Powys County Council devolvement uncertainties (which is to do with transferring the management of sports facilities to communities)
‘More of the same’, we said – no radical changes – natural growth – perhaps more competitive play options – perhaps some progress on the third court front.
In my report todayI’m going to briefly cover:-
Powys devolvement, our facilities, game improvement, the competitive scenario, enjoying being a member of a Club, children, membership levels, financial overview
And a summary of this last year and what we plan for the year ahead
Starting with Powys. The CSA (Crickhowell Sports Association) still hasn’t been able to sign the lease. There are still one or two errors in the document which Powys needs to correct. This devolvement process started in December 2013 and has not ended yet!
As we said last year, we’ll need to amend our constitution once the lease is signed. It is probably sensible to start work on this now.
The CSA is working well as a management group. It manages the joint facilities – clubhouse and car park primarily – each individual club managing its own affairs and grounds.
Just to remind you, the clubs each pay a levy to the CSA, loosely based on their numbers of members. Additional CSA income comes from letting out the clubhouse, mostly to U3A groups – bridge, archaeology, poetry and play reading, Welsh matters. Income from these groups is more than twice the income from the clubs in total so they are very important to the CSA’s finances.
As you’ll have noticed the clubhouse facilities have been significantly improved over this last year –walls painted (inside and out), new carpet, new windows, new heaters and much cleaning and tidying -some of this has been paid for by Powys, the rest by the CSA.
CSA costs remain uncertain and we know that they will increase in two years’ time when Powys will stop paying insurance premiums for the clubhouse and for the various statutory tests which have to be carried on premises such as ours
This may then mean an increase in the levies we have to pay the CSA, but for the moment these are not changing.
Moving on to the facilities we manage ourselves – our courts and their immediate surrounds.
Before I go on to the courts themselves I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our volunteer head gardener! – Debbie’s husband Christopher – for all the work he’s done on clearing the flower beds in front of the clubhouse. It washard work and he’s done a brilliant job for us.
As far as the courts themselves are concerned, we’ve had them repainted this year, as you know, had the nets and a few other things mended and have put windbreaks up. Many thanks to the men on the committee for getting all of this done.
We may only have two courts (not counting the mini court) but they are of a high standard.
We remain keen to find a way to have a third court at least, but have nothing to report on this front at the moment.
Competitive play
As far competition within the Club is concerned, after a gap of a couple of years we ran some Open Club Tournaments again last summer – Men’s Singles, Men’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles – no specific Ladies Tournaments – not enough Ladies wanting to take part.
We plan to run open tournaments again this summer (possibly with Ladies events as well!), culminating in Finals Day on Saturday July 15th – a date for your diaries.
We also ran a one day, American style Doubles tournament in October, which was fun and plan to do something similar again this year.
We also plan to set up a Singles Ladder again - ladies and gentlemen on the same ladder –to run throughout the summer. More information on this to follow soon.
As far as external competition is concerned at the present point in time, we only have one team in the local leagues – a veteran men’s doubles team, which has been in a winter league for the past two seasons.
At the start of the year we also had a mixed doubles team but we had to withdraw from the league because of insufficient ladies wanting to play in it.
Last summer our Juniors were also playing in leagues but we haven’t entered any teams for this year, again because of insufficient numbers wanting to take part.
We don’t have enough competitively orientated Ladies or Juniors and could do with more members of these types, or a change of heart, to enable our existing, competitively orientated members to play in leagues!
Game improvement – we are delighted with the coaching service we receive from Beacons Tennis Academy. Last year we had c 25 children taking part in the Wednesday evening coaching sessions.
Adult coaching has not been so popular but the Monday morning Doubles Tactics sessions have a loyal and committed number of participants.
This last term we also set up another type of coaching session, on a trial basis, which we’ve called ‘rusty rackets’ – for those who haven’t played for a while or for complete beginners.
We had 5 participants on each of the two rusty rackets courses we ran last term.
We’ll be running rusty rackets courses again this term.
Another way to improve your game, if you don’t want to go to a coaching session, is to use the ball machine which we’ve recently had checked over. It’s in our store room and instructions for using it are tied to it. If you need more information about how to use it, please ask a committee member.
Children– We are pleased to have quite a strong membership base of children (more info later) – some having joined as family members and some as individuals. Most of the children take part in the coaching sessions. Some also take part in the Junior Social sessions which we’ve now set up for Friday evenings.
We think we could do a bit more for the children and are considering some kind of tournament for them, to take place later in the year.
Membership – we’ve ended the year 2016/17 with 84 members, which compares with 90 at the end of the previous year. We had hoped for/probably even expected an increase in membership numbers, with our new website up and running and no change in subscription fees (which remain very good value). However, we didn’t do any specific publicity to attract new members and whilst we did attract some, this was offset by a few former members deciding not to renew, for whatever reason.
At the end of this last year we have in fact done some minor Club publicity (via leaflets in shop windows) and are waiting to see what effect that will have on interest in joining.
In the charts you have in front of you, you can see our membership profile for the last two years. The profiles are very similar, as you can see.
Financial – current account.As a result, with the fees being the same in both years, our income from subscriptions was much the same over those two years. Our ongoing, current account expenditure was less this last year however, than the previous year, leading to a surplus of income over expenditure of £3300. We plan to put this into reserves which, as you know are set aside for ongoing and future court maintenance, special capital projects and to be a resource for funding/part funding an additional court, if ever we get to that point.
Financial - reserves. This year we’ve spent some money out of reserves on wind breaks and court repainting. Also a very modest sum on a table tennis table. With the monies we are putting back into reserves this year, we’ll be starting 2017/18 with £26,000 in reserves and c £1500 in current account before the new subs come in – a healthy financial situation.
We need membership numbers this coming year to be at least the same as last year, to maintain this situation. We see no reason why this shouldn’t be the case.
I’ve left the subject of ‘enjoyment’ to the end. You’ll have remembered that it’s in our Vision to have “a Club which members (children as well as adults) enjoy belonging to”.
Obviously we hope that our members enjoy our facilities; the events we organise; the opportunities for game improvement we provide and so on.
This coming year we plan to focus more specifically than we have done recently on the enjoyment side of things and the belonging to a Club. No specific details on this at the moment. More information to follow in the next few weeks.
So, in summary, this last year has been one of steady progress in the key aspects of our Vision. We’ve improved our management of our facilities and our affairs.
We now have excellent court facilities, a developing internal competitive context (our tournaments) and also facilities for game improvement, via our coaching programme and ball machine availability. We have a satisfactory membership base and are in a healthy financial situation.
We’d like to continue progressing in these key aspects in 2017/18, with particular emphasis this next year perhaps on improving our competitive play provision for Ladies and Juniors on the one hand and on the other, to provide even more opportunities for enjoyment, for us all!
I’d like to thank everyone on the Committee and also our non- committee volunteers, for their contributions to everything we’ve done this year. Our achievements have been very much a group effort.
I’d like to thank Mark in particular this year. He is standing down as Secretary – a role he has fulfilled for us for the last 3 years, which has involved minuting our meetings and dealing with the LTA and other outside bodies. He also organised our team for the Mixed Doubles league, when we had one – not an easy task given our shortage of competitive ladies. Thank you Mark for everything.
Wj 26/4/17
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