At the beginning of March, the club was approached by Josh Foster who had an app-based singles tennis ladder competition that he was promoting. Josh and his business partner didn’t have much sports management experience, they were just tennis players that wanted to improve on the competition formats that they had come across by ironing out the weaknesses of them with their own competition.

Their vision for Sportch was to “…bring together players, clubs, and coaches in every community through an interactive platform designed for connecting and competing. Our simple, fun and brandable app can be tailored by clubs to automate their internal club ladder”.

After an online demo from Josh, we were impressed and agreed to take a closer look with a free trial in April. We got good feedback from those that used it during that time and so we decided to purchase membership for the club on an ongoing basis.

Since then, there have been 341 matches played at Armley and there are 40 people currently on the Sportch singles ladder.

Congratulations to Andy Illingworth who finished top of the club’s singles ladder this year.

Jacob Evans set the early pace when the competition began in April, winning 6 of the first 10 games played, including against Andy.

Tom Swiderski would also challenge for the top spot, but Andy would finish as the undisputed champion with only the one defeat throughout the summer. Guntars Fritis has been the most active player in the competition and with the most wins.

If you would like more information on signing up for the singles ladder, please have a look on the club website homepage for more details click on www.sportch.co.uk.

There is a £5 sign-up fee for a year on the ladder and you will find details of how to pay for this in the Membership section of the club website.

For any questions around this or singles tennis in general, please get in touch with me, Rich Slack at richardslack12@gmail.com.

An interesting suggestion was put to me recently regarding an additional knockout competition in the summer so I will look into that. Either way, the ladder will continue to facilitate games on an ongoing basis and the winner will be whoever is on top in September.

You will need to continue playing matches if you want to knock Andy off the top of the ladder and have a chance of getting your name on the trophy for 2022!

Good luck – but more importantly, have fun!