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Welwyn Tennis Club send rackets and balls to Brazil
August 8 -- Paul
Evenett's friends at Welwyn Tennis Club gave him an unusual retirement
present - more than 30 tennis rackets and a big tub of balls.
Not that he was prone to court rage and forever breaking rackets - there was
a good reason for this gift to mark his departure from the Metropolitan
Police.
Paul's daughter, Emily De Franca works for the Pao Da Vida (Bread of Life)
project in Brazil. While back in England for a holiday, she thought it would
be a great idea to buy some tennis rackets for the underprivileged street
kids in Brazil. Which is why Paul's friends clubbed together and bought the
bumper bundle - at a very advantageous price from Hit And Run Sports at
Gosling Sports Park.
And Welwyn Tennis Club started an appeal for unwanted rackets from members.
It all resulted in some very full suitcases for Emily's flight back to Brazil
and a lot of happy kids at Pao Da Vida.
Emily has been working with children in Brazil since leaving university with
a BA in anthropology.
As a child she had a passion for travel and other cultures and a
compassionate heart. True to her Christian beliefs she took missionary
courses and started to work with street children in the north east of Brazil
in and around Recife.
She found herself working mainly with street boys many of whom were members
of violent gangs. These children, some abandoned by their families or
orphaned, are not supported in any way and are considered little better than vermin.
With little food and no love they readily turn to, drugs, glue sniffing and
violence.
The Bread of Life project adopts these boys from about six to 17 years old
and brings them into a protective home environment, feeding them, clothing
them and loving them as is the right of all children.
The rackets certainly put a smile on their faces, which gave Paul a lot of
pleasure from his present.
Since his retirement, Paul has started a business of his own called Jibajaba,
dealing with Bluetooth communications technology - that's when he's not
looking after the bar at Welwyn Tennis Club in his capacity as bar officer.
Anyone who wants to support this project (currently in the process of
becoming a registered charity) can contact Paul Evenett at 2 Roman Way,
Welwyn, Herts AL6 9RJ for more details.
The Welwyn & Hatfield Times
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Tributes to popular tennis
pro
August 7 -- The
sporting community is mourning the death of a popular Blackpool tennis coach.
Howard Sunderland died in Trinity Hospice, aged 49, after
a battle with cancer.
He had coached tennis at Stanley Park, South Shore Tennis Club on Midgeland
Road, and at Arnold School and the former Lawrence House School in St Annes
before spending
Mr Sunderland was born in Coventry but moved to Blackpool,
where his grandmother lived, when he was 15. He worked in the Channel Islands
and France before spending 10 years employed as a forklift truck driver for
ICI on Squires Gate Lane.
But the tennis bug then struck and just three years after taking up the game,
he had mastered it sufficiently to qualify as a coach.
After working at Stanley Park, he was appointed as coach at South Shore in
1991.
Following a couple of holidays in Vietnam, he moved out to South East Asia
permanently in 1997 and taught tennis at a hotel complex in Ho Chi Minh City.
He met and married his wife Anh there and the couple had a daughter Quyen,
now aged eight.
The family returned to Blackpool in 2007 and he enrolled at Blackpool and The
Fylde College to study literature and history.
Close friend Dave Lomas said: "In his youth he had been an amateur boxer
and he came to tennis quite late, being about 25 when he took it up.
"It was only about three years after that he became a coach. He was also
very interested in film and had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of films and
who starred in them.
"He will be sadly missed by all those who knew him. He contributed a lot
to the sports scene in Blackpool, particularly in the 1990s when he was also
a member of the Sports Council to represent the interests of tennis in
Blackpool."
Howard, who also leaves a half-brother, died in Trinity Hospice on Thursday
July 30 and his funeral service was held at Carleton Crematorium on Wednesday
August 5.
The Gazette, Blackpool
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Darwen tennis club appeals for sponsors
August
7 – Darwen Tennis Club are
struggling to find sponsorship for a £60,000 plan to boost dwindling
membership numbers by installing all-weather courts.
The town's only tennis club has a pair of outdated shale
courts from the 1950s. Proposals for the new facility for winter 2010 would
draw it level with rivals in the East Lancashire League and allow for fewer
expensive cancellations.
Adverse weather severely affects the rock courts which
take much longer to dry out than their modern counterpart. A significant
number of training
sessions and matches have been called off during a wet summer.
Seventy five members currently pay £80 per season, which
runs from March to November. Club secretary Marjorie Bibby is asking for
potential sponsors to get in touch immediately as she believed that the
frustration caused by this state of affairs has limited people joining.
She said: "Our committee got together and tried to
work out how we could get more Darweners involved and halt dwindling
membership numbers. All-weather courts were deemed the answer as they would
greatly increase play time.
"If the scheme came to fruition we would thrive as at
the moment players pay an up front membership fee. Naturally, if games are
cancelled this angers them and can prevent renewals or new members joining.
"Along with Crosshill Tennis Club, we are the only
participants in the East Lancashire League without the surface and we need
this change to secure our future."
The club, which was set up in 1924, has submitted funding
applications to trustees of landfill companies Biffa and SITA, the Darwen
Neighbourhood Board for £10,000 and the Lawn Tennis Association. None of
these have been successful yet.
Mrs Bibby said: "We initially contacted the landfill
companies last July but were rejected and told to apply again, while we are
awaiting news from the Neighbourhood Board.
"Private sponsors would be gratefully accepted and
help us to progress."
Anyone wanting to get involved should contact Mrs Bibby on
01254 701 741 or visit www.darwentennis.co.uk.
By Matt
Monaghan, Darwen News
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