Current events and how we began
Breaking news
Coylton LTC became a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) on the 12th September, 2023. Its charity no. is SC052814.
How we began
Although information before the post-war years is rather sketchy, it is known that a tennis club was started at Coylton in 1927/1928 by the young people of Coylton and play was suspended during the war years.
In 1946/47 the club appears to have started up once more and seems to have been in quite a healthy state, with one blaes court and the later addition of a club house. Alex Murray, a founding tennis club member, remembered playing tennis in the 50's on this surface. At that time there was a fairly strong membership with about equal numbers of male and females. National Service, however, meant that many young men were called up and limited information exists about the fate of tennis in Coylton which appears to have been suspended once more.
The present club was started by the then local postmistress, Mrs Trayner, in 1979 after a lapse of many years. We had one all weather court and a few dedicated adults who negotiated with the local council to arrange playing times. Junior membership was built up by having weekly coaching from Frank Paul and tournaments every Sunday, open to all the juniors in the village and run by Mrs E Ross. Gradually membership and enthusiasm increased and several members became coaches, enabling the club to offer their own junior and senior coaching sessions.
In 1982 two new courts were produced by Kyle and Carrick District Council. The club flourished with increased membership and coaches. Despite only having two courts, we entered gents and ladies teams in the Ayrshire league but had to obtain the use of a third court from a local caravan park (a present annually of a bottle of Scotch sealing the deal!). The introduction of teams at junior level quickly followed with continued success.
In the early 90's, the small stone pavilion which we shared with the local football club was extended by means of a donation from the Opencast Mining Company to incorporate a small room enabling us to entertain visiting teams. The main drawback was that this facility could not remain open for the use of members or the dissemination of information.
In 1995 a new sports centre was built in Coylton on the site of our existing courts. The club benefited by having three brand new tenni top surface courts with floodlighting which we now lease from South Ayrshire Council, and finally the club purchased a portacabin as a club house. In the last couple of years we have built a more permanent structure for our club house and this was recently completed with the addition of all the required facilities.
The club continues to flourish with adult teams and a very strong junior section participating locally with noted success. We have managed to produce players at District, County, South of Scotland level and also one at national level, who has gone on to become a Scottish coach with Tennis Scotland.