Serious About Sport Ltd

What a great weekend Captaining the Sussex 14U Boys at the Weald Tennis Club in Hassocks. The boys just missed out on making the finals losing to Hampshire and IOW on a tie break shoot out. We were both very proud of the efforts of the players, and the team spirit shown throughout the weekend. Great to be supporting Tennis Sussex !

Thanks for the continued support ,cant wait to use this racket.

2023 was an excellent year for the team at Serious About Sport. We have seen the team grow and our programme numbers increase by 300% since our starting point in 2021.

We have players of all levels training with our team, and an increasing number of County players as well as a player pushing for the top 10 in the UK in their age group.

Serious About Sport is about growing the game of tennis, growing the opportunities for players and coaches and creating a pathway of development for our team members. The photo attached to this post is our team running through a coach education session on developing player standards within group training, and to set up the programme for 2024.

We are very excited to see what 2024 brings and to grow the opportunities within Serious About Sport.

We are looking for Level 2 & Level 3 tennis coaches interested in taking up a new challenge across multiple venues in North Sussex. We have full and part time opportunities within our expanding team working within clubs and community venues. Please send your CV to Grant at [email protected] or Rhys at [email protected] if you are interested in joining us or finding out more about the opportunities available.

Are you a L2 or L3 Tennis Coach looking for a new challenge? We are looking to recruit a coach/coaches to join our growing team in North Sussex with the opportunity to work in multiple venues and settings. Are you looking for an opportunity to develop your coaching into a long term career, or simply looking for a new challenge working in a positive forward thinking team then we would love to hear from you. Opportunities are available for a part time or full time position. If you are interested please message me here or send your CV to [email protected]

Applications close on 31st March but we will look to recruit before this date if the right coach comes forward.

Our tennis coaching operation is growing and we are looking for new coaches to join our team in North Sussex. We are interested in hearing from L2 & L3 tennis coaches who are looking for part time or full time work. If you want to be part of a team, and want to get stuck into growing a programme we would love to hear from you. Applications close on 1st March but we will recruit earlier if the right coach/coaches come along before this date. Email your CV to [email protected] if you would like to be considered for a role with our team.

*Thursday Thinking Tennis*

Week 6

We are pleased to be sharing our next thought in the process of developing and improving your programme within your club. From finding our blind spots, to understanding areas that work well or need improvement and prioritising these areas using a RAG rating the next step is to set your goals for improving the offering available.

Goals need to be SMART to be most effective, which means they need to be Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, and Timed.

So, you could set a goal and say we want increase membership, or we want to provide better coaching but without more details these goals are not effective and who knows if you are achieving them or if you have influenced the outcome.

A SMART goal would look more like this:

The committee or club management agree that they want to have 50 new members, (broken down into 20 new beginners, 15 juniors and 15 intermediate social players) 6 months from now.

By setting a more specific and SMART goal, everyone can focus on how they will achieve this, the strategy for this to be achieved and whether they have been successful at the end of the 6-month period. At the end of the 6 months the goal may have been reached but it also may not, either way a new plan can be set. By reviewing after the time-period set you will be able to understand what was successful and what needs to be improved or changed in the future.

If you would like more information about SAS LTD services, we would be happy to have a chat. Please email [email protected] or visit our website https://www.seriousaboutsportltd.co.uk

First home match of the season for Brighton Panthers Women’s Tennis Team its great to be working the both BUCS teams. Good luck today.

Exciting new coach education opportunity in Sussex in October. Contact Rhys on [email protected] if you would like more details or to book a space.
We are very excited to welcome Simon Wheatley to Crawley Tennis Club and provide the opportunity for coaches to receive cutting edge coach education. Accreditation points available through independent learning.

*Thursday Thinking Tennis*

Welcome back to SAS LTD’s, Thursday Thinking Tennis where we look at different ways to manage our programmes and clubs. Over the last few weeks, we have looked at ways of finding our blind spots and finding out what we may not be delivering within our club or programme. So, what do we need to do with the information? How do we prioritise what is the right thing to work on first and what is an area of need?

One great tool for this is using a RAG rating system. RAG stands for Red, Amber and Green. If you write down the list of areas you wish to look at, you can then put whether an area is a Red (not up to the required level, needs attention), Amber (its ok, could be better, needs some tweaking or improvement), Green (it is in a good place, happy with the offering and it is working well for what is required at present).

The aim is to then start to assess why an area is red, amber or green and start to set aims and goals on how to improve them. If you have a red, what will make it an amber? if you have an amber what will make it a green within your club or programme? It may be that you have to move from red to amber and cannot jump straight to green due to logistics and time available, but if you are focusing on improving the right areas your club and programme can only continue to improve.

If you would like more information about SAS LTD services, we would be happy to have a chat. Please email [email protected] or visit our website https://www.seriousaboutsportltd.co.uk

*Thursdays Thinking Tennis*

What does your club programme look like? How often do you review what is on offer? Does the programme match the goals of the club?

As part of our continued look at blind spots within club programmes we are looking at what is on offer within a club with the question “What is not happening in your programme?” We often look at what we do, and talk positively about the impact it has on the club and its membership, but how often do we review what we are not doing? What are the opportunities that we are missing and what elements of a programme could we adapt or add to attract more participants into our programme or new members to the club?

It is very easy to fall into the routine of “this works well, our groups are always full” and whilst that may be the case and you are engaging well with the participants in the groups, are you missing a trick to provide other opportunities and groups that would engage other sections of the membership or community.

The question “What is not happening in our programme?” promotes the need to look outside of our own environment, to search out what others may be doing and to research what other options we may have available. Being curious helps us to continue to be on top of our game and to reduce the blind spots we may be missing.

If you would like more information about SAS LTD services, we would be happy to have a chat. Please email [email protected] or visit our website https://www.seriousaboutsportltd.co.uk