LED Floodlights for Tavistock Tennis Club

Aim

LED floodlights for Winter Evening Tennis

• Who We Are 
  
  Tavistock Tennis Club (TTC) is a community sports club centrally located in Tavistock, West Devon, inside a public park, offering social and competitive tennis, both to our members, and to the general public via online pay-and-play. We have eight courts in total: four astroturf and four tarmac: a clubhouse with a main room looking onto the courts, toilets including disabled, changing facilities and a small kitchen, used for social events. We currently have 469 members, including 3 octogenarians who play regularly, plus a growing junior section (our youngest member is four years old.
  
  

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• Engagement with Local Community   
  
  We halved our membership fees post Covid lockdowns to make us more accessible to the whole community, more than doubling our membership. In conjunction with this we initiated Starting Tennis Later in Life (STLiL), free coaching for adult beginners coupled with a local advertising campaign featuring Eve taking up tennis. This programme continues, having already attracted over 40 new members to our club.
  
  We reach out to everyone in the community particularly people who find exercise difficult to access: girls, mums, the elderly, and people with mental health issues.
  
  We hold regular Open Days so that anyone who might be thinking about taking up tennis gets the chance to come down and have a go without commitment.
  
  TTC offers free membership and group coaching to Ukrainian refugees, who now enjoy their own social session to which mothers can bring their children. 
    
  

In addition to this, in conjunction with Tregarland House and Tor View SEMH School, which provide accommodation for a wide variety of disadvantaged clients, we provide free special needs tennis facilitation, including some individual tuition and a weekly social sessions for special needs players and their minders.  

We also run team building half day sessions of mini-tennis for local businesses.

Why TTC Needs Funding to Put in LED Floodlights

The big increase in our membership, attracting younger players who work full time and have family commitments, means that there's a growing demand for evening floodlit tennis.  The Club has five courts lit by ageing halides that are past their useful life, consume large amounts of electricity, sully the Club's environmental footprint, and fail frequently requiring the expensive hire of a cherry picker to repair them.   And now, on top of all this, our electricity bill this winter is set to soar.  LEDs give more lumens per watt, saving electricity (up to 70% savings) and last around 4 times longer.  The aim of this Crowdfunder is to replace the halogens for courts 7&8 and 4&5.  The best quote we've had to achieve this is £22,664.30.
 

Winter Afternoon Sunset over our Courts

This project successfully funded on 4th December 2022