February 2009 Notes

The Air Hall

Members will be pleased to hear that there has been rapid progress on the air hall. The Sports Club put out the following announcement at the end of last week –

WORK TO START ON CHIPPENHAM AIR HALL PROJECT

There was good news for the sportsmen and women of North Wiltshire this week when Chippenham Sports Club announced that contracts had been placed for their new air hall and that work would start within days.

This outcome seemed likely with the confirmation just before Christmas the major award from Sport England to add to those announced earlier from North Wiltshire District Council and the Chippenham Borough Lands Charity.

But the project was hit by the sudden death of the club’s Chairman, local property developer Tim Waycott who had been due to act as the project manager during the contract and construction stages. “It’s been a difficult couple of months without Tim to guide us,” said new Chairman David Corcoran, “But under the guidance of vice- Chairman Bob Corke, and with the Committee and Trustees working as a team, together with some outstanding cooperation from the contractors, we’ve got there”.

The was icing on the cake with the news mid January that the project had been awarded a further grant of £25,000 from the Landfill Tax Credit Fund a sum which, as David Corcoran said, had taken the pressure off financially. “There is little doubt that we would have gone ahead with the project anyway”, he said, “But this very welcome sum has helped our business plan enormously.”

The air hall, a double skin reinforced fabric dome covering a floodlit area the size of two tennis courts, will provide a much needed facility for a number of sports. The members of Chippenham Netball Club will be amongst the first to benefit and intend to make the Sports Club their base. Chair Sharon Saunders said, “This is wonderful news after all the years of having no permanent courts on which to train, and it will enable us at last to introduce our long planned youth coaching programme.”

The new hall will complement the existing tennis, cricket and lawn bowls facilities at the Sports Club. Other sports expected to use the facility include basketball, badminton and futsal, FIFA’s version of 5 a side football which is proving popular elsewhere in Wiltshire. And as David Corcoran added, “our own Tennis and Cricket Clubs have already declared a wish to use it – for example for winter training - and we have had enquiries from someone wishing to base a yoga course there. But we see it as a community facility and we hope that local schools, clubs and organisations will want to use it.”

The project is expected to take around four months to complete and to be in use by early summer.

The exact management and use allocation of the new facility has yet to be determined, but the plan is to have in place a full-time ‘manager’ who will organise activities and undertake multi-sports coaching. The air hall will be run as a separate, self financing, unit of the Sports Club and provision will be made for Tennis. We’ll keep Members informed as things develop.

Wimbledon Tickets

The LTA has announced the first stage of this year’s Wimbledon ticket allocation. We do not yet have full details, so cannot be precise as to the dates or ticket details, though early indications are that we may get more tickets this year than last. In the past we have had a good spread of tickets throughout the tournament.

As usual we shall hold a draw for tickets from those members who have indicated an interest by entering their name on the list we shall be putting up in the Club Room. Eligibility will be strictly on the basis that the draw is open only to full time, fully paid up, members of the Club as at the date of the draw (late April 2009), who were also full time members last season and are also members of British Tennis. Those successful last year will not be eligible this year. At least two pairs of tickets will be reserved for junior members so juniors should not put their names down on this list.

Membership 2009/10

My thanks to those of you who have renewed your membership for 2009/10. Don’t forget that you can get a discount of £10 (senior) or £5 (part-time) if you get your completed membership form back to Sue Walker before 1 April 2009. You can download an application form by clicking here . If you can’t or don’t want to print one yourself, there are spare copies in the green folder in the Club Room.

Box Leagues

The box leagues are now going well. Don’t forget that the present series of games has to be concluded by 1 March; so if you can only play in the evenings you will have to use the token operated floodlights on courts 5 or 6. I’ve had a couple of reports that the meters have become somewhat erratic of late, so if you have a problem with them, let me know. Tokens for the lights are available from the upstairs bar.

Tony Clark, 16 February 2009

http://www.chippenhamtennis.org.uk