Well, we got through our first Committee meeting this week with yours truly as Chair without (major) incident! Phew!
We are gelling as a new team and coming up with ideas and plans for the 2025 club year starting April 1st. Plans include work to be done on the clubhouse to make it more flood resilient, a replacement shed for all the equipment – ooh the excitement – and what I hope will be an interesting list of Competitions and Events.
Our new Captains, Toby and Sarah, are busy starting to think about teams for the Summer Leagues, our new Membership Secretary, Edie, is working on how we might get more ladies to join the club (amongst other things), and our new Treasurer, John, is checking we have enough cash in the bank to pay for what we plan to do. Apparently, we are solvent – for the time being.
Most importantly of all, Chris and Keith are making sure that our hard courts and grass courts are and will be in tip top condition for the coming season. More on this in my February update, including improvements planned for the grass courts.
Oh, and for anyone slightly bored with BBQ sausages and worried about their diet, Craig has been tasked to find a pizza oven.
On a more serious note, we are partnering with a company called Dyuce who are on a mission to recycle 60 million tennis balls over the next 5 years. Probably not all of them from SLTC. Look out for the circular green collection pod which will be installed in February, and which will help us to do our bit for sustainability.
Tennis balls are on court for an average 6 hours but take 300 years to biodegrade. Ours will now be recycled to create recycled rubber for athletic footwear. A good move forward and we will no longer need to empty large tubs of old tennis balls into the river.
Joking - no need to write in. Especially you, Mr Seething from Cherry Orchard.
I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has volunteered to help manage the Thursday and Saturday sessions. This is something I was quite worried about, but we are more or less covered for the next few months. I guess I will be sending out another plea for help later in the year, especially over the peak summer period, but for now, thank you to those of you who stepped up.
In case you missed it, there is a new section on the website (one of several new sections actually) called HELP OUT where members can click through to weekly rotas for the club sessions – and the club Saturday tea. Yes, we do have a website and quite a lot of work has gone into it. Check it out when you have a moment.
OK I think that’s it for now. Fingers crossed that the ‘Snow Wall’ promised by some forecasters for the end of the month doesn’t reach Shrewsbury!
Play great tennis, but take care,
Jeremy