Friday 5 August 2011

Various updates

Dear all
I hope you are enjoying your tennis this summer. I thought I would write to you all to update on the following:
- Booking rules
- Coaching
- Court maintenance & security
- Yahoo group tidy up
- End of season tournament
- Yoga
- Community Amateur Sports Club

Please let me know if there are any other burning issues you have or just general feedback on your club.

Booking rules

Following some comments at the AGM (minutes for which are now up on the notice board), we undertook a consultation on the rules, which previously stated that members could book for an hour each, but two members playing together could have 2 hours.

The poll results can be found here and it was clear that there was a demand for individual members to be able to book for more than an hour. We have therefore amended the booking rules, which can be found here – http://tinyurl.com/BTC-BookingRules (and are also posted to the noticeboard) to state that individual members can book for 90 minutes, but that two members can still book for two hours as long as both are named.

As before, you can only have one future booking in existence at any time and if you don’t need a booking, you should delete it.

Thank you to all those who voted and for other feedback.

Coaching

Kate Mudie, who has been looking after the kids coaching is stepping down and Stine Goetrik will be taking this on. Thanks to Kate for all her hard work and good luck to Stine. If you are interested in kids coaching please drop Stine an email at stinegoetrik@googlemail.com.

We have also had a number of enquiries about adult coaching. We are trying to set some group sessions up for this as well and should be providing more information shortly on this. In the meantime the coach, Simon Tricker, is available for ad hoc sessions on 07905 768 891.

Court maintenance and security

All club officers are volunteers and we do not pay anyone for general cleaning and maintenance other than a once a year pressure clean of the court surface required for the warranty. We therefore rely on people keeping the courts clean. Please clear up after yourselves and use the dustbin. If there is a pile of leaves around on the court and you have the time, it would also be much appreciated if you could also use the brush available on court to sweep them up and put them in the bin.

We are also holding a clear up session from 12-2pm on 17 September (also the date for the club tournament – see below), where we will do a little more serious tidy up and weeding of the edges. It will also be an opportunity to meet other members and maybe have a drink and a bite to eat.

Finally, please keep the door shut and challenge anyone who you suspect should not be there. We had the lead from the clubhouse roof stolen last week.

Yahoo group tidy up

We have 175 members of the Yahoo group and only 95 paid up memberships for this year. Of course, some of this may be due to family memberships etc, but not all. I shall therefore be reconciling all yahoo group members to paid up members and may be asking some of you to confirm. Please bear with me through this process and if you haven’t yet paid your subscription, now is the time to do so.

End of season tournament

We plan to hold an end of season tournament on Saturday 17 September (with a break for the midday clearup and some lunch). Plans currently are for a doubles format with rotating partners leading to a final of the top ranked two women and top two men (or handicapped in some way to arrive at a similar conclusion). Exact details will depend upon number of entrants, so please email Marcus Cowles if you want to take part - marcus.cowles@googlemail.com.

Yoga

The clubhouse has now been used for Yoga since the handover at the end of May and is proving popular. The more classes that are held, the more the club makes and a bit of yoga also complements tennis well, helping you to get in shape ahead of and after a game, so if you are interested, you can find out more and book courses through http://www.zenyoga.org.uk/index.html

Community Amateur Sports Club (CASC)

We have now applied to be a CASC, which allows us to get discounted rates and not to have to pay tax on any subscriptions (as long as we continue to retain all monies for the club). This also allows us to qualify for gift aid for any charitable donations. The club is in good shape at the moment, but the key will be how long the court surface lasts and also plans to apply for floodlights next year (for which there will be extensive local and member consultation).

Thank you for your support, enjoy the rest of the season and again, please get in touch if there is anything you think could be improved.



Hugh
BTC Chair
August 2011