Updates on new tennis courts project
LATEST
Dumfries Tennis Club New Courts GoFundMe Page
At Dumfries Tennis Club we have four outdoor tennis courts that are all weather artificial grass with floodlighting. These courts were given a guidance life span of 10 years and thanks to our previous hard work, we are now in our 22nd year with the same surface.
Unfortunately, despite rigorous maintenance, the condition of the tennis courts has deteriorated significantly.
The adverse weather over the winter months has proved a huge difficulty for the club and created a major barrier to those wanting to play tennis in Dumfries.
Since November 2019 we have cancelled 60 junior coaching sessions from our planned 224 due to the court conditions following bad weather.
If it rains and the courts flood,
coaching is cancelled,
matches are cancelled,
club sessions are cancelled.
VISION
Dumfries Tennis Club, which is completely run and managed by volunteers who love tennis, is the main tennis club in South West Scotland and the only tennis club in Dumfries and the Nithsdale area
Our Vision is to promote and grow tennis at our club so that it can be enjoyed and played throughout the year. This can only be achieved through raising sufficient funds to have our courts resurfaced with a new modern high-performance carpet.
We hope that through resurfacing the tennis courts we can:
- Attract and retain more people to tennis, increase participation of junior and adult tennis players in the Dumfries and Nithsdale region and avoid the cancellation of matches, coaching, and events due to unsafe court conditions after bad weather.
- Continue to grow our thriving junior tennis coaching programmes where we have 58 juniors attending throughout the week.
- Continue to be the main venue to run the majority of senior and junior tennis tournaments in the Dumfries & Galloway region which attracts players from all over Scotland and the North of England.
- Continue to support and develop our own local coaches who help deliver our coaching programmes all year round.
FUNDING
In September 2019 the tennis club committee created an action plan for the new tennis courts project. Quotes were obtained for the necessary work to be carried out with these coming in at £80,000 and £87,000.
The committee recently met in April 2020 (by video conference) and we are pleased to announce that we have had two successful grant applications to date:
£20,000 was awarded from the Windfarm Grant
£25,000 was awarded from the Holywood Trust
We are very grateful for these grants and this takes us a significant way to reaching our target, however there are further funds to be raised before we are able to commence new courts project and our committee of volunteers are working on ideas to raise further funds.
SUPPORT
This is where we need you, the public and every tennis enthusiast’s help, we cannot achieve our aim without your support.
We understand during the current situation that you are not able to enjoy playing tennis on our courts or any other sport, we hope this will be temporary.
However, we don’t want to think about the prospect of having to play on the existing court surface for another winter. The reality is we won’t be able to. This would have a detrimental effect on our playing numbers, both juniors and seniors.
We need as much support as possible to raise a further £8,000 to make the project possible and for the resurface works to begin.
Therefore, if you can support our project then any amount would be gratefully received.