Club Newsletter – July 2026
| Welcome to our July newsletter! Update on club expansion proposal and associated padel proposition We’ve referred to this in the last couple of monthly newsletters, and discussions with our next door neighbours Berkhamsted Football Club (BFC) have continued. At the recent quarterly board meeting of Berkhamsted Sports Grounds (BSG, owners of the land in question: the football ground and tennis court 6b), BSG gave approval to all aspects of the proposal as freeholders and landlord. We are now in course of giving detailed briefings to our Trustees and governance committees (Club Council and Tennis Committee), and the many factors that have evolved from the preliminary idea stage initially put forward by BFC. We strongly believe that through rigorous review and challenge it has developed into a compelling proposition. All being well, we will then come to you with dates for member consultation meetings, so that you are fully informed and we can hear your views, and a date for a special general meeting to poll your votes on the motions we will be proposing. Look out for news coming soon. New Club Treasurer and new Welfare Officer Those of you who were at our AGM in February will know that Phil Trimmer and Sarah Markwort advised their intention to step down from their respective Club Treasurer and Welfare Officer roles during 2026, subject to having replacement volunteers in place and managed handovers. We are very pleased to say that Wal Mackey is our incoming Club Treasurer and Debbie Hawkes our new Welfare Officer. Both Wal and Debbie are already in situ and getting to grips with their brief. We are enormously grateful to Phil and Sarah who performed their roles fantastically. We made a leaving award to Sarah at the AGM. Phil’s situation was a little more breaking news at the time. Now it is confirmed, we will be arranging a special event to mark his departure from this senior club role that he did so brilliantly well for an incredible 18 years! Watch this space. Our club depends on members putting their hands up to say “I’ll do that”. We are lucky to have people like Phil, Sarah, Wal and Debbie. Thank you. Searching for player contact details (part 2) In last month’s newsletter (by the way, previous editions are all available on our club website), we provided a How To find member contact details in the box league systems and on the MMM system to arrange games. We thought it worthy of a follow-up because there is one very important dependency for the MMM search to work: members have to give consent on the MMM system for their contact details to be searchable. Have you? Are yours? We know this is patchy at best at the moment. Why not check now, it will take you all of about 60 seconds. Follow these 3 steps (and there are screenshots of the ‘journey’ below): – log into MMM and click BLTSRC at the top right; – click About BLTSRC top left; and – check you’ve ticked the box for Share Contact details with other club members, and click the box if blank. |
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Tennis What a fantastic Club Finals Day on 27th June! So much happening, so well supported. Fabulous effort from everyone involved, and a huge well done to the Tournament Committee in shepherding everyone through the many events and orchestrating the whole tournament and the day itself so well. A full report was issued at the time, so we’ll restrict ourselves here to a mass congratulations to all but, in particular, the winners of the championship events: Ladies singles: Ellie Mathews Men’s singles: Max Martinez Ladies doubles: Lisa Greenfield & Anna Styles Men’s doubles: Andy Ring & Josh Sapwell Mixed doubles: Andy Ring & Anna Styles Bournemouth here we come! Our National Summer League team have once more qualified for the finals weekend at West Hants Club on the weekend of 4th – 6th September. Great work! Squash & Racketball A quiet off-season period at the moment. There’s a touch of masochism about squash and racketball players, as they love nothing more than charging around at full pelt for 45 minutes and emerging from the court as if they’ve baked themselves in a sauna. But even for our most hardy it’s been flipping hot to play lately! Good luck to Katie Winterstein at the 2026 World Squash Masters in Australia! Our ladies 1st team player is travelling to Perth at the end of August We hope you have an amazing adventure Katie! Bar & Café news It’s been a very busy period for Claire and Graham and their team of helpers, culminating in a full house of about 200 people to watch England’s World Cup semi-final… defeat 😢 August will be a quieter month and then we go again with the new football season and team squash matches start to get underway for the… Winter 😳 Berkhamsted Sports Grounds vacancy We mentioned BSG at the start of this newsletter. Their company secretary is retiring from the position and the charity now needs to recruit a successor. If anyone is potentially interested, contact our tennis member Paul Forster, Chair of BSG, who will happily tell you more about the position. Until next month, that’s all for now! Club Council (John Shaw, Wal Mackey, Adam Suggett, Pete Walker, Matt Markwort, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock) |
Upcoming Events
Quiz Night – September