Through our outreach programs, we bring the joy of tennis to a wider community, ensuring everyone has the opportunity to get involved.
Making Tennis Accessible to All.
Through our outreach programs, we bring the joy and benefits of playing tennis to a wider community, ensuring everyone has the opportunity to get involved.
In our centenary year, 2025, the club has replaced steps with a ramp to enable wheelchair users to play tennis and also visit the park more easily, with access to the disabled facilities in the clubhouse.
In 2023, the Club introduced sessions for students with special needs from local schools, Durants and Oaktree, and for Barnet and Southgate College students with learning difficulties. ‘Several of these students have participated in work experience in the Club’s café, developing skills and confidence towards a more independent life,’ says Club chair Graham Sievers. ‘Their warm and positive comments from the feedback surveys have been extraordinary, and have touched the Club volunteers, coaches and members alike.’
Working with the community hub
For decades the club has placed a high priority on providing tennis and coaching sessions for people from low-income families or with disabilities. In the early nineties, for example, the club began an association with a charity Dazu, to provide inclusive recreational and educational activities that were open to children of all abilities. ‘Research showed clear correlations between being actively involved in sports that involve hand-eye coordination and improvements in developing writing skills,’ says Claire Whetstone, who set up the link between the charity and the club. ‘Because of this, Dazu incorporated tennis into its range of activities in the early nineties and carried on with this until about 2018.
In 2022 we partnered with the NHS Chase Farm Hospital’s secure unit, to provide coached sessions for people with mental health issues who were now discharged into the community, with support workers.
“Our service experiences high levels of obesity and general poor physical health management. Having been given the opportunity to work collaboratively with Conway Tennis Club, service users are able to be outside exercising, following a fitness plan tailored to their ability, with a trained coach. In addition, sessions provide the opportunity to develop tennis skills, to try a new activity, and to explore a new social environment. This helps to develop a better sense of self, building confidence and self-esteem, supporting low mood and anxiety and giving an added purpose to the week.
We have had positive feedback from our service users regarding the tennis programme, and sessions are for all abilities, meaning it is extremely inclusive and accessible for our client group. We hope to be able to continue working closely with the tennis club in supporting the recovery and rehabilitation of service users.”
The NHS Community Hub’s Lead Therapist
Olga and Borys at Conway LTC
Welcoming refugee children to our junior coaching sessions
Conway LTC offers free attendance and participation for children of Ukrainian refugees. One of the attendees was 3 year old Borys – his mother wrote to us:
“I’d like to thank you, Anna, Corina, Izabela, Ricky and of course Borys’s favourite tennis coach Toby, and everyone at the Conway Tennis Club from the bottom of my heart for your support, I can’t find the words to express my gratitude, it means so much! Could you please share this with everyone?
Over these past 3 months I’ve experienced, and felt, and learnt more than in all my (almost) 40 years. And with all the unspeakable monstrosity that is happening to my home and Ukrainian people, the fear for my relatives and friends and the rage I feel for our assailants to the point when it actually hurts, the compassion and selflessness, the kindness, benevolence and honorability of the people I have met in the UK and Poland, people who’ve opened their hearts, their homes to us – is what makes me cry. Our guardian angel must have been working overtime non-stop for us to have met so many wonderful people along our journey.
We plan to stay here, in Kendal now, until going back to Ukraine would be safe for my son (which unfortunately I can’t see happening soon). If you are ever in the Lake District, we would love for you to visit us. We’ll never forget your support and kindness.”
Olga and Borys
Primary school children’s sessions
Conway hosts twice weekly term time sessions for a local primary school, often seeing 30 or more students at a time, with several coaches and assistants to help.
We welcome ideas and initiatives from members and the general public on how we can continue to develop our Tennis for All ethos.
