Inclusive tennis club earns Champions of Change title

Including inactive adults and disabled athletes has earnt a Sunshine Coast tennis club the honour of being Champions of Change.

INCLUSIVE SPORT: Coolum Tennis Club has won Tennis Queensland’s Champion of Change award for driving social inclusion and participation in tennis across all player ages and abilities. Pictured are Noelene Cook and Eadie Biggs. Picture: Patrick Woods

AFTER working hard to include inactive adults and disabled athletes the Coolum Tennis Club has been awarded the Champions of Change award by Tennis Queensland.

Presented during the recent ATP Cup and Brisbane International at the Queensland Tennis Centre, club members were thrilled to be acknowledged by tennis peers for achievements in developing new programs and increasing player participation at the club.

Coolum Tennis head coach Andrew Ash said the club, which offered weekly competitive, social, fitness, wheelchair and community programs, has been working very hard to facilitate opportunities for anyone that wants to play tennis.

“It’s good to get an award for the club but … we are a club that is just trying to make sure that everyone gets a chance to play, from high-performance players to six-year-old juniors who have never picked up a racket, to 80-year-olds, to wheelchair players and the disabled. It’s something that everyone can come to,” he said.

The Tennis Australia wheelchair tennis coach, who started coaching at the club in 2012, said the most challenging part about changing the club’s demographic was creating a family culture.

“Trying to create a family and club culture so it’s not user groups that don’t ever link together … we make sure everyone can cross over and they know each other so they are all different people but all members of the club,” he said.

“It means you’ve got a wheelchair guy playing with five other able-bodied people or you’ve got a junior out playing with a lady who might be in her seventies in an adult program.”

Member of 30 years and past secretary of the club, Noelene Cook, said the changes in the club, which now has 260 players ranging from four to 84 years of age, have brought more junior members to help ensure the club’s future.

“We have lot more juniors than what we used to have. It’s part of Andrew’s change … it’s good, it has increased the members because a lot of the older people are dropping out,” she said.

Tennis Queensland participation officer Nick Todorov said the inclusive initiatives at the Coolum Tennis Club made it a great role model for other clubs in the region and the perfect recipient of the new award.

“We wanted to identify clubs that have done stuff in programs that have addressed minority groups in the community and Coolum had done some great with work with inactive adults and Andrew has done a great job running a program that caters for disabled athletes,” Mr Todorov said.

“They are a bit of a leader on the Coast because other clubs always ask me what some good examples are, and I refer back to Coolum as a benchmark and that’s why they stand out.”

Mr Todorov said he hoped the new award inspired other clubs to be champions of change.

“It shows other clubs in the region good practice and what innovation means and how the club can grow because we are in a time where clubs have to be able to do things differently.”

To continue its growth the club is hoping to receive a state government Activate Infrastructure grant which will mean the club can continue to meet demand on the centre and expand the program schedule.