Tennis NT Club Updates - Feb 2025

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00

Coaching and officiating

Participation Coaching and Competition Assistant free online courses

A reminder about the Participation Coaching and Competition Assistant online courses available through Bounce — these are free introductory courses that are a great place for anyone to start, and a great way to encourage club members to volunteer in coaching and officiating activities at your club. Links to enrol in courses are:

If you have any questions or issues enrolling please reach out to us.

Trainee Coaching Course + Cardio Tennis and Hot Shots Tennis Blue Stage Program

For those seeking in-person training, Tennis Australia’s Trainee Coaching Course will be run over 2 days on the weekend of 31 May – 1 June 2025 at the Darwin International Tennis Centre. If you have done the Participation Coaching course, have worked as an Assistant Coach, or want to brush on your coaching skills, this is a great course for you. Contact us to find out more, or at the links below -

Tennis Australia are also running a Cardio Tennis and Hot Shots Tennis Blue Stage Program on 30 May 2025 10:30am - 1:30pm. Two world class workshops in one day! David Grainger will present on both ‘Building your Hot Shots Tennis Blue Stage Program’ and ‘Level Up with Cardio Tennis: Attract, Retain, and Grow Your Adult Business!’ — Register here for these workshops.

Officiating - NT Sports Awards

Congratulations to Greg Dickson on being named a finalist for NT Official of the Year at the 2025 NT Sports Awards. Greg's award selection recognizes his dedication and achievements as an official, especially his successes over the past year. The winners will be announced at the NT Sports Awards Gala on 29 March 2025.  Tennis NT would like to wish Greg the best of luck. 

Club communications

Below is an outline of our planned regular communications for the coming year, we welcome any feedback on this and will be able to discuss what works best for your club during our Annual Club Planning sessions in the next few weeks (see below).

  • Annual Club Planning sessions - our team has completed a review for each club highlighting key focus areas, projects, dates and events for 2025. We are in the process of creating Club Action Plans and develop HIT Reports based on this and will set meetings to work through these and adjust based on your feedback. This will help guide us in your strategic and operational plans for the year and ensure we can plan to deliver the assistance you need at the right time.
  • Regular Club Check-ins - Ben will be implementing a scheduled club check-in cycle this year. This will involve a scheduled meeting (in person or on video/phone call based on your club) every 6 weeks to chat through Action Plan progress and other issues/projects/plans/strategies relevant for your club. Club check-ins will commence following our Annual Club Planning sessions.
  • Club updates newsletter - this newsletter will be produced at least monthly and contain time-based outgoing information for you to review and share relevant items with your club members
  • HIT (Heath Indicator of Tennis) Surveys - we will start to schedule these in with each club in Q3/4, aiming to have all completed by end of the year to restart the cycle outlined above
  • Club Resource website - we will continue to build out the resources available for you on this website
  • Club forums - we would like to plan our online club forums to allow us to have open discussions about relevant topics as chosen by our clubs. Could each club president / head coach / operator please let Ben or Peta know your preferred frequency and day / time for these sessions.

 

Complementary disciplines

Pickleball 

  • Tennis Australia has launched a new Pickleball information site - pickleballaus.au - noting Katherine TC doesn't yet appear on the "Where to Play" map, we will look into updating this with TA
  • A reminder that pickleball nets, paddles and drop lines can be purchased from Tennis Australia. contact us for more information or to place an order

Beach Tennis

  • TEMS is trialling Beach Tennis as part of Feb Fit weekly on Tuesdays at 630pm – it’s a new fun way to play, come and have a go!

 

Marketing

Below is a summary of TNT's current marketing strategies and activities related to member clubs.

Social Media

  • Facebook & Instagram Ads running with lead generations being sent to clubs direct
  • Social Resharing – Tennis NT to re-share club content
  • Local push – Tennis NT celebrating local superstars heading to interstate tournaments, comps etc. and community engagement opportunities, mentioning club names in copy
  • Coach & Participation Assets to go up on Tennis NT socials over the next 4 weeks – drive to visit local club or email TNT for redirection

Social networks

  • Follow Tennis NT on Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram - this helps us reach more people through your networks.
  • Also you will see that we are heavily using Facebook Events to help promote competitions, trials, and training opportunities.

Website

  • Articles shared regularly on Tennis NT website, linking customers to relevant clubs    

Feb Fit

  • Mix & Hot100 Radio Ads (30 & 60 Seconds beginning Feb 3rd)
  • Live Broadcast at Feb Fit Sessions (Selected Clubs to be notified)
  • Mix & Hot 100 webpage presence: Feb Fit Sessions and Info
  • Mix & Hot 100 socials presence: Feb Fit Sessions and Info (look out for tags and colab posts to reshare)
  • DITC has supported Gardens Tennis Club by running free Cardio at Gardens. Tennis NT are assisting TEMS to run a pilot of Beach Tennis.

Defence Expo

  • Tennis NT promoted tennis at the recent families Defence Expo for new families in Darwin/Palmerston. Enquires were 50/50 across adults and kids programs and competitive play opportunities.

Local Area Marketing Assets  & Generic Canva Assets: NT Specific

  • All club email addresses will have received an invite to a new folder labelled NT Club Assets on Canva (sent Wed 5th Feb)
  • This folder has been specifically pulled from the master Canva overload of assets – so only the most relevant assets for clubs are there and easy to find
  • Assets have been tailored to add local TNT email contacts, club contacts and space for club logos
  • Assets are custom designed to fit socials, website and A4 print out posters
  • Any of these assets can be modified by TNT so please reach out should you wish for changes
  • Assets include: Generic Templates (club updates, FYIs, generic club info to go out), Wet Weather Updates, Coach Recruitment, Integrity (Child Safety & Sideline Behaviour), Officials & Volunteering Recruitment, Cardio Tennis, Social Tennis, Colour ball Comps, Hot Shots, Pickleball, Competitive Play, Court Hire, Accessibility Top 5 Tips, Blind Low Vision Tennis, Intellectual Disability Tennis, Serving Pride, Photography & Videography Wavers, Live Streaming Notification & Disclaimer

1-on-1 Club Training can be offered in this space if clubs wish (idea is to save time by giving you ready to use assets, not create work). We will continue adding assets you may need and Ben will act as the main contact should clubs have any requests or questions.

Insurance

A reminder about the insurance resources available to you:

 

Territory Tennis Leagues

Territory Premier League

The Territory Premier League is a singles competition held on Monday nights at the Darwin International Tennis Centre. The league held it's second round on February 10th. Over 30 players are currently registered and participating.

Territory Junior League

The first season of the 2025 Territory Junior League begins this Friday at 5:30pm (February 14th). Over 60 junior players from the Darwin and Palmerston regions have joined teams to participate this season. This league's success is a testament to the dedication of our clubs and coaches in developing the next generation of tennis players.

NT Competitive Play Newsletter

Tennis NT will be sending a monthly newsletter to all players who have registered for tournaments and leagues throughout 2024. This newsletter will: 

  • Provide short updates about upcoming tournaments, leagues and events. 
  • Highlight successes that our coaches and players achieve locally, nationally and internationally.
  • Promote competitive play opportunities at Clubs.

 

Talent in the NT

Firstly, confirming that we will be replacing Jess Polack (more info on that below). In the meantime, we are running an interim program through term 1 with the support of private coaches and staff. The interim program is one weekly session for the term 1 Zone Squad and National Development Squads respectively. We congratulate the players who are continuing in these programs and the new players too.

Super 10s trials for Season 1 will be on Saturday 22nd February. All players must register to attend the Super 10s trials.

Jess Polack’s role is being replaced, and it is open for applications. You may notice that the role is different, now officially bringing together responsibility for Talent and Coach development. Please share this role with your own networks Talent and Coach Manager. Or interact with our post on LinkedIn to help with spreading the word.  

Clubspark training

  • The next Clubspark training session will be on Thursday 27th of Feb at 3.30pm AEST - focused on Court Hire
  • Clubspark Q&A will the following day, Friday 28th of Feb at 12pm AEST
  • You can register for these sessions on your Clubspark > Admin > Home module - scroll down to the Training section on the page and follow the instructions

 

Other training

CLUBMAP is running a series of free webinars covering a variety of club operations, governance and management topics, you can sign find more information about and sign up for the webinars on their website: https://clubmap.com.au/learn/webinars 

Volunteering

Duke 4Sport partnership

Tennis NT are working through implementation of a partnership with Duke 4Sport, with a goal of accessing more volunteers for clubs and events throughout the NT. We will work with each club to establish volunteer opportunities for the Duke 4Sport participants in the coming weeks, please reach out to Ben/Peta with any questions about the program in the meantime.