We were delighted to receive notice a few days ago that our partner organisation Sport Impact was the recipient of a British Tennis and The Lawn Tennis Association Award. Sport Impact focuses on embedding high-quality physical education and healthy lifestyle support within primary schools in the local area; their partnership director is Alan Watkinson, a former teacher at Isleworth & Syon and Mo Farah’s childhood trainer. These particular awards recognise the efforts that establishments have made in developing tennis for young people.

Sport Impact won the Education Award for last academic year based on the tennis coaching programme and annual tennis festival managed in conjunction with the Duke Meadows Tennis Club in Chiswick. The coaching programme has been extremely successful, with up to 2500 primary school children receiving professional tennis coaching each year. The boys and girls have responded extremely positively and demonstrated great enthusiasm for tennis – it’s entirely possible that the new Andy Murray or Johanna Konta have been amongst the cohort! The programme has been running since 2012, with over 15,000 young people receiving a coaching experience in their school.

The coaching year concluded with the Tennis Festival in Chiswick, as over 530 children 50 primary and special schools in Hounslow take part in the day-long event. It also utilises over 50 Sports Leaders from secondary schools as umpires, and is always a fantastic day. Since 2012, over 2500 children have had an incredible experience playing tennis at the world-class facilities. These events are a fantastic way to encourage participation in sport from a very young age.

Upon receiving the award, Pete Lammas (Tennis Festival Co-Ordinator) said, “Sport Impact is extremely grateful and proud to receive this Education Award and we will continue to provide high-quality tennis coaching and competition experiences for the young people in Hounslow in the future.”

 

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