Get Set 4 Tennis are an award-winning fully inclusive community tennis club providing free or affordable tennis to over 1000 children and adults every week. We have two venues; Denham Way Recreation Ground, Maple Cross and Manor House Grounds, Abbots Langley. Since May 2023 we have been fortunate enough to take on a fully renovated site for a 15 year lease, enabling us to provide so much more than just tennis to the local community. As a result of this work, we were named Hertfordshire LTA Tennis 4 All Award Winners for our work in inclusion. Our 7th award in 5 years.
For the past three years, GS4 have run crowdfunding pages which have been extremely well received by the local community and raised lots of vital funds to support our work.
Our work this year has very much had a community focus. We have a fantastic new hub building allowing us to run creative SEND club, Lego club, and Art Club. We have opened as a warm safe space every Thursday and we welcome the Inclusion Project once a week. This space is so important to our community as many are disadvantaged either physically or financially. It allows everyone to be able to access extra curricular clubs and learn new skills.
The building has also been used to host parties, open days and other community events.
This is all in addition to our usual outreach programmes with local SEND schools, nurseries and within areas of deprivation.
Our career pathway for children with additional needs also goes from strength to strength as we are now piloting an LTA initiative for young people with additional needs to get the support required to gain an LTA Level 1 coaching badge, this is the only project of its kind in the UK.
We have also introduced mental well being projects and tennis leaders courses. These projects are so important to our local community and offer tennis as a vehicle to change lives. With mental health statistics continually rising in young people we offer early intervention support to children aged 7-18 through bespoke courses.
Our leaders courses are for young people aged 11-16 in our local community to gain skills to support tennis club and other sporting venues. They are offered volunteering and even some paid work after they have completed the course. We particularly offer children who are likely to fall into the criminal justice system a place on this course.