Tennis Australia and Victoria’s support for coaches and clubs has been lacklustre at best in 2020.
After spending nearly six months in lockdown, many tennis instructors in Victoria feel as though they have been abandoned this year.
A head coach at numerous tennis clubs in Metropolitan Melbourne believes coaches in Melbourne have received finite support from the governing body in these trying times.
‘I had one phone call from a Tennis Victoria representative, during the first lockdown in April.’
‘That is the only contact I have had from anyone,’ they claim.
The coach tells The First Serve they understand there is a limited capacity in support Tennis Victoria could give coaches due to the nature of the state government’s restrictions, but even a check-up would’ve been invaluable.
They put the efforts as simply, ‘pretty poor.’
An organisation as large and influential as Tennis Victoria has a duty to support the people who grow the game.
‘I rang all my coaches every 3 weeks,’ and ‘I got zero contact (from Tennis Victoria) and I know a couple of other coaches are in the same boat.’
The coach laughs as they tell us that they are still waiting to hear back from Tennis Victoria as they made two separate phone calls to the organisation at the start of lockdown.
‘I don’t know what these people were doing but it is not hard for a representative of South East Melbourne to contact coaches and check-up.’
The coach did explain that there were a few zoom sessions led by Tennis Australia, but nothing that was helping with the current circumstances.
Furthermore, another coach at a club in South-East Melbourne, stated that there has been ‘zero’ support for coaches.
This coach sent ‘multiple emails to the coaching leader in [their] area and got no responses.’
‘No assistance was given at all,’ they assert.
Both coaches elected to remain anonymous due to fear of ‘repercussions’ and ‘needing to protect what little [they] have in these times.’
Despite these claims, Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley and President Jayne Hrdlicka released a statement with an opposite viewpoint - “the connection between clubs, coaches, associations, players and staff from the various state and territory bodies and the national federation has been at its strongest.”
The statement on the Tennis Australia website further expresses, “what the team has tried to collate, is as much relevant and consistent information available to help you traverse the road to recovery and enable tennis to rally back to life.”
It seems that Tennis Australia and Tennis Victoria may be out of touch with reality due to their actions and lack of support over the past year.
With numerous complaints over social media as well as a general conscious amongst the tennis community that the corporation have failed them, Tiley and Hrdlicka may be due for wake-up call.
And they may very well receive it sooner rather than later.
A survey recently was sent to all club coaches in Australia, asking them to review the organisations support and response during the COVID-19 pandemic. From our multiple sources, it doesn’t look like the results will be too flash hot for Tennis Australia.
Whether Tiley and his team had other priorities to focus on, such as getting the Australian Open up and running, or whether they just simply didn’t see the value in putting more resources towards supporting coaches remains to be seen. However, without support for local clubs and coaches, the game of tennis is non-existent in Australia.
Yes, getting the Australian Open going in 2021 is necessary in order to grow the game. But maybe it is time for Tiley, Hrdlicka and the team at Tennis Australia to start focusing more on supporting grass roots tennis.
Tennis clubs and coaches were not asking for the organisation to fix all their problems but were looking for a collaborative and sustainable plan to help survive during COVID-19.
This was not a battle clubs and coaches needed to face alone, but they did.
Tennis Australia failed them.
The year of 2020 is the year Tennis Australia needs to realise that they must provide a better foundation and pillars to help coaches not just in pandemics, but in day to day life.
If Tennis Australia and Victoria can realise and in turn rectify their mistakes from this year, it will make for a much more strongly wielded tennis community, something we all at The First Serve want to see.