Welcome to our June newsletter

Welcome to our June newsletter, and a particular welcome to our 40 new members who joined at this month’s Club Open Day!  We hope you’re settling in well; let us know if you need anything.

Tennis

Finals Day on Saturday was fabulous!  Great weather, really well attended, expertly organised, and fantastic matches!

Congratulations to everyone who made it through the draws to take part on the day.  Over 30 finals were played! Tyrell will be issuing a report but, just to mention the 2 main events:  we have a new men’s champion, with Dimi Koronakos beating Will Magson; and Maddie Lightfoot retained the women’s singles, beating Lisa Greenfield.

Our amazing men’s National League team have qualified for the playoffs on 20th July, with a place in the National Finals at stake.  Venue and opponents will be announced by the LTA next week; we are hoping for a home tie, for a brilliant day at the club.

Lastly, just to confirm that the revised coaching framework is now in place, with a reduced pricing model for individual lessons.

Squash & Racketball

On Thursday to Sunday next week, we are holding our annual PSA Challenger Tour event, the Berkhamsted Linksap Open, bringing world class pro players to our club.

We’ve got:  10 players in the world top 150; 4 players from Adam’s pro training hub; and 6 of England’s top U19 juniors and future stars of the game.

Tickets are still available.  Contact John Shaw:  john.gs@btinternet.com / 07775 542712.  Let’s make it a sell-out!

We’ve mentioned before on these pages the success achieved by a number of our club players at Masters events. At this month’s British Open (attracting a world-wide entry) they excelled themselves!  Tony Clifford won the O80s; Darren Withey was runner-up in the O60s; Gavin Roger-Lund won the O55s; and Ali Coker was a set-finalist in the O45s.  We have champions among us (and all playing in our club box leagues!).

Facilities

The ruffles in the new astroturf on tennis courts 10-12 have now flattened out.  But their rise and fall has led to contraction and expansion along the tape on the underside of the astroturf that joins the seams, creating some ‘deadspots'.  This is not an unprecedented issue, and our court contractors have a couple of tried and tested options to remedy the problem, commencing with court 10 (work was undertaken this week and we are reviewing the outcome).

As flagged in last month’s newsletter and as we committed at this year’s AGM, this week we launched a survey to our squash and racketball members to gauge their preferences and priorities for squash court improvements.  We will announce the results in due course.

Once the schools have broken up for Summer and the holiday season is here, the club will be quieter than usual.  We have some work planned to brighten up our entrance lobby and players’ bar, to make them more inviting.  We are currently scoping and budgeting the work.

Finally, the sandbags in the car park will soon be gone. These are to be utilised for the quarterly court maintenance of tennis courts 7-9.

Guests playing at our club

Although the club will be quieter than usual in July and August, it is a popular time for visitors to play at the club.

Guests of members are always welcome, subject to the usual visitor rates (tennis:  £10 seniors / £5 juniors.  Squash £5 / £3).  A reminder that we also offer a Summer Student rate of £62 for Uni students back for the hols.

Spotlight on...

… the Berkhamsted Sports Ground Charitable Association and the launch of their Sporting Excellence Awards - an opportunity to recognise our people.

In the ’Spotlight on’ feature in our March 2024 newsletter, we explained the ownership of our club and the Broadwater private access road.

In 1924, we acquired the site of the original Lawn Tennis Club, and the BSGCA was formed to acquire the adjoining land for the football and cricket clubs.  Some of the BSGCA land - the strip which now has the ITC, our car park, and tennis courts 6a and 6b - became the Berkhamsted Hard Courts Tennis Club, which merged with us in 1967.

Hence, BSGCA is the landowner of the football club, the cricket club (now relocated to Kitcheners Field) and a relatively small part of our club, and it is celebrating its centenary this year.

It is chaired by one of our tennis members, Paul Forster, and the board of trustees includes our club chair, John Shaw, along with the chairs of a number of the town’s other sports clubs.

In recent time, it has grown to be a wider community of many of the local sports clubs to further its original purpose of enhancing the wellbeing of Berkhamsted’s residents through the provision of facilities for participation in sports.

You may have noticed that the BSGCA has been in the local news lately.

To mark their centenary, the charity has revamped its website (https://www.bsgca.org/ ) and acronym (simply BSG:  Berkhamsted Sports Grounds) and, in particular, it has launched the Sporting Excellence Awards (https://www.bsgca.org/awards/).

These awards are open to all sports clubs in Berkhamsted.  It will be an annual scheme, with the inaugural awards presented in June 2025.  There are 6 categories, all backed by local corporate sponsors:

1. Club of the year
2. Youth sports person of the year (boys/girls)
3. Adult sports person of the year (men/women)
4. Rising star of the year
5. Volunteer of the year
6. Volunteer coach of the year

Individual winners will receive £250 vouchers for Berkhamsted Sports Shop.  The Rising Star will receive £1000 towards elite coaching.  The Club of the Year will also receive £1000.  And there will be trophies for all award winners.

These are not insignificant amounts, and it would be great to have our own people nominated by you and recognised for their efforts and accomplishments.

Please mark this for future reference, and we will provide more details when they are available re the timing and process for submitting nominations for the June 2025 awards.

That’s all for now, until next time.

Club Council

(John Shaw, Phil Trimmer, Michael Beavis, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock, Matt Markwort)