Welcome to our July newsletter! Summer is well and truly here, we all seem to have taken to living in shorts and t-shirts more often than not, and schools have broken up.

Generally it’s a relatively quiet time of year at the club, with many of you taking family holidays, giving us the opportunity to crack on with a few jobs around the club…

Upgrade projects at the club

We’ve completed the conversion to glass back-walls of our last 2 traditional concrete squash courts, giving us a stretch of 6 fantastic modern courts across the width of the clubhouse.

Even if you don’t play squash or racketball, pop over to that side of the building and have a look.

For our tennis courts, we’ll soon start the work to improve the rear corner of court 12, the walkway entrance, and the back fence along 10-12. We’ve obtained quotes and will now select the contractor.

Planning permission is in course to upgrade the floodlights on courts 1-3 and 6a, to complete the conversion to carbon-efficient LED of all our courts (other than 6a which has no lighting) - indoors, outdoors, tennis, squash. The application is now at the recommendation stage with the DBC planning officer.

In our Indoor Tennis Centre, we’re arranging with a court maintenance specialist to undertake a deep clean of the courts to improve both their appearance and playing quality.

Back inside the clubhouse, we’ve instructed the refurb of the ladies’ toilets, which for some while haven’t really been fit-for-purpose when we hold events, and we’re awaiting a scheduled start date and duration plan. The work will obviously cause some inconvenience, so we’ll keep you informed; please bear with us.

Tennis

Our National League men’s team has successfully qualified for the National Finals for the 3rd consecutive year!

On Saturday our team of Pat Brady, Conor Brady, Josh Sapwell and Will Nolan had a resounding 4-0 win away at Sutton Coldfield and are now through to the finals weekend in Bournemouth on 5th-7th September.

Look out for 2 new initiatives at the club arriving shortly:

• we’re launching a Ladies Ladder League; and
• we’re going to have a Pickleball open day in the ITC. A coach-led taster session to introduce you to this burgeoning sport and test the appetite for offering Pickleball in the ITC alongside tennis, as we do with racketball on our squash courts.

News coming soon from your Tennis Committee on both items.

All results and placings are finally settled for our Winter tennis teams and they had another successful season, especially the ladies teams.

In the Aylesbury League, our top ladies team run by Kirsty Hamilton won the 2nd Division and Alice Stoker’s 2nd team won Division 4, so both will be looking forward to promotion next winter. Dan Jay’s Men’s 1st team did well to maintain their position in the top division as did Ian Bragg’s team in Div 5. Bobby Mercandino’s team came 2nd in Div 8 so will be climbing again. The mixed team run by Shrina Patel also topped their Division 4. We are planning to add another mixed team next winter as this has proven very popular.

In the Herts Vets League, our O40s ladies came top of the top division!! Well done Kate Murphy for this great result. Farida Korallus led the O50s A team to second place in the top division. Fantastic results ladies! Tracey Mackey’s relatively new O50s B team will be going up next Winter having won Div 4B. Our Mens O45s A team came 2nd in their top division, organised by Steve Passmore. Thank you Colin Bayliss for running both O65s and O70s and Phil Casserley for running the O55s.

Squash & Racketball

Huge congratulations to new member Sam Mueller who won the Women’s O50s British Racketball Championships last weekend! Welcome to our club Sam, we best get you into our teams! Hard lines to Darren Withey who narrowly lost in the Men’s O60s semi-final against the number 1 seed.

It’s the off-season at the moment, but the hot weather makes for a bouncier ball and longer rallies, so the Summer is a great time to play and keep your hand in!

The new season will be here soon enough, from mid/end September, and we’ll be launching it in style by hosting the South of England Regional Masters Tournament on the weekend of 19th-21st September. The first time we’ve hosted the event.

No need to travel, no need to book hotels, we’ve brought it to you.

All Masters age groups, men and women, from 035s upwards. Everyone’s guaranteed a minimum of 2 matches, at least 1st round main and 1st round plate. Join in. Participate. Be involved. Enjoy the experience. You’ve now got a Summer training goal!

Enter here https://www.englandsquashmasters.co.uk/ and pay as a ‘member of host venue’ to get the discounted rate.

Your Squash Committee will be issuing regular reminders via the WhatsApp chat groups - we won’t settle for anything less than a large take-up from you guys!

Bar news

Can the lionesses retain the Women’s Euros title after that amazing end to their semi-final?! The final is on Sunday, kick-off 5pm, and Graham will have the bar open as usual from 12 noon. Come and support them with us!

Turning to the oval ball, can the British Lions repeat their victory against Australia last weekend and win the series? The 2nd test match is on Saturday, kick-off 11am.

Watch it at our place! With an obligatory pint of Guinness and breakfast bap of course.

Just one more thing - the Columbo section

You may remember we mentioned we're working with local specialists Indigo Tree on a refreshed club website. A full new design and build using industry standard web technology, unlike our current legacy set-up.

We are currently adding content to the development site and we hope to begin systems testing and user testing soon, making sure it integrates seamlessly with our systems for membership management, contact management, court booking and box leagues.

It is our intention that the new landing page will be phase 1 of a wider Customer Experience programme, with subsequent phases encompassing all our back-end systems, as we are aware that some things such as our subscriptions processing and email distribution are now looking clunky and dated.

We aim to release the new website in Q4 this year, and then begin the review of our other systems next year. We aim to have not just excellent facilities, but a first class user journey for you too, to use the current jargon.

Until next time, that’s all for now!

Club Council

(John Shaw, Phil Trimmer, Adam Suggett, Pete Walker, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock & Matt Markwort)