The Dedanist' Foundation

The Dedanists’ Foundation Re-Generating Real Tennis

Who We Are.. What We Do..

We were founded in 2011 as a grant-giving 1145526) created with the sole aim of increasing participation in real tennis. Young players of the game and we have too few. We seek and subsidise the game so that youngsters backgrounds are given the opportunity to afford to do so.

We provide real tennis clubs and their professionals cash grants and other practical support that and help them to recruit more youngsters game and play it on a regular basis. We subsidise coaching and transport costs so that youngsters backgrounds can afford to play and so that and clubs are properly remunerated.

grant-giving charity (No. increasing youth players are the future seek to support youngsters from all to play and can professionals with that will encourage youngsters to try youngsterssubsidisethecourt, from all that professionals

We design and subsidise marketing programmes and open days so that clubs and their professionals can reach out to parents, schools, universities and other youth groups in the community.

We run training workshops to gather and disseminate best practice in how to recruit, coach and retain juniors.

We develop and sponsor inter-club and national tournaments for new young players so that they meet their peers from other clubs and are motivated to improve.

We subsidise clubs to create strong junior sections with a clear identity and a full agenda of activities that will engage juniors and attract newcomers.

We raise the funds to do all this from donations. Please consider becoming a donor or a patron - see the last pages for how to do this.

Please visit our website for up to date news on events, fund raising, availability of grants and how to donate.

www.dedanistsfoundation.org

ReGenerating

Some of Our RECENT GRANTS

Bristol

During the first half of 2022 the fortunes of The Bristol Real Tennis Club were revived by a six month project over seen by Chris Ronaldson & Maggie Henderson-Tew. They set about reviving the diminishing membership at the club with a special emphasis on recruiting juniors. Over 70 juniors were introduced to Real Tennis during this period. The Dedanists’ Foundation were particularly keen to help ensure that this initiative did not falter after Chris & Maggie returned to their normal positions at Radley. New Bristol HeadPro, Ben TaylorMatthews was obviously very keen to continue the work that had already been done with juniors. The Dedanists’ Foundation has awarded grants of £3,000 for 2022 and a further £3,000 for 2023.

Jesmond Dene

Mark & Zak Eadle have been building a thriving junior section at The Jesmond club, with the help of grants from The Foundation, who share the cost of running the junior programme with the club. As well as many older juniors,

the Jesmond programme currently consists of 12 youngsters aged 7 and under and 9 juniors aged 8 to 12. These young players are predominantly from State Schools. A grant of £2,500 has been agreed for 2023.

The Oratory

The Oratory junior programme managed by Levi Gale, recruits and coaches youngsters from members children, the local community and it’s schools. During 2022 the club held two successful Junior Open Days and held weekend coaching sessions for a total of 20 youngsters aged 8 - 17. Some of the older members of the

programme are using Real tennis as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award. Three local junior schools also bring pupils along to the club on a regular basis during term-time. The Dedanists’ Foundation shares the cost of running this extensive junior programme and awarded a grant to the club of £2,000 for 2022 and £2,500 for 2023.

Re-Generating Real Tennis

PLH Cup 2022/23 Season

This inter-club junior team competition is sponsored by the Foundation and is aimed at giving juniors who are relatively new to the game a chance to take part in team matches and meet their junior counterparts from other clubs. The draw for this season has been made and we look forward to many good junior club matches again this season. The final will once again be held at Wellington in June 2023.

SUPPORT for UNIVERSITIES

We actively support and fund the playing of real tennis at Universities. Traditionally many young players lose touch with the game when they go off to university and it is our aim to keep as many of them on court during their university years. We fund real tennis clubs to recruit, organise and coach students from universities in their area. We also encourage students to form a real tennis club within their own university.

• We award grants to help students with the cost of courts, coaching, equipment, and transport costs.

• We fund the design and printing of posters and leaflets to promote real tennis at Fresher’s Fairs.

• We sponsor inter-university tournaments and matches, including the annual InterUniversity Tournament at Cambridge.

• We facilitate the transition of young players from real tennis at their school or home club to real tennis at university. Many young players fail to make this transition and are lost to the

game for many years. We now work with the T&RA and real tennis clubs to identify school leavers who play real tennis, to offer grants towards the cost of traveling to their new nearest club so that they can carry on playing. This season we are supporting York University for the first time. They have formed a student real tennis cub and will be traveling to the Jesmond Dene club on a fortnightly basis. We have agreed on a grant of £1250 towards their ongoing costs.

Inter-University Real Tennis Tournament

The highlight of the university’s real tennis year is the coming together of all the university clubs to play in the annual Inter-University Tournament at Cambridge. This season we are providing an extra grant of £1600 towards the cost of enlarging the end-of-tournament dinner. The aim is to move this event to one of the college dining rooms making it a more prestigious occasion. We hope this will increase the desire to return to the event in the following years.

STATE SCHOOLS

Parkside College, Cambridge

Parkside College is a co-ed state secondary school in the centre of Cambridge with 800 pupils age 11-18. With a grant of £2500 from the Dedanists’ Foundation, the Cambridge Real Tennis Club has been running weekly coaching sessions for 20 pupils in 4 separate groups. This season the Cambridge Pros have returned to take an assembly at the college and have recruited a new group of younger players aged 11, to come to the real tennis court after school every Friday in addition to the existing groups. This is an ideal example of how Dedanists’ Foundation grants achieve our objective to increase junior participation in our sport on an open access basis.

One of the Cambridge pros taking assembly at Parkside College, followed by ‘on court’ coaching for the 11 year old pupils.

Oaklands College at Seacourt

Open access

In November 2022, Seacourt welcomed its first group of students from Oaklands 6th Form College. The students, who are based just off Hayling Island, had a really enjoyable couple

of hours with Seacourt professional Andy Lyons. These coaching sessions are funded by a grant from the Foundation and more visits are planned in future on a regular basis.

SCOUTS

Scouts try Real Tennis at Petworth

Our stated objective as a charity is to increase junior participation in real tennis on an open-access basis. We aim to give as many youngsters as possible, from all backgrounds, a chance to enjoy our game. We realised that every court in the UK has scout groups based nearby and we decided to reach out to them to see if they would be interested in “having a go” at Real Tennis. Our trial was led by Foundation Director, Julian Wilkinson who contacted scout leaders in the Petworth area and offered them a visit to the historic court and a onehour lesson to be paid for by the Dedanists Foundation in partnership with the Petworth club. The response was excellent! Two groups of Explorer Scouts from the Haslemere area have already been along and scouts from Petworth are coming in January. If, as we suspect, this turns out to be a worthwhile initiative, then we will roll it out to all scout groups in the vicinity of any club that wishes to participate.

The British Junior Championships 2022

The British

took place

on August 19th-21st. It was wonderful to see a near record entry of 38 youngsters which was up from just 23 the previous year. This huge growth came largely as a result of the efforts of the Dedanists' Foundation, working hard at clubs that previously had very few players. The turnaround at these clubs is a direct result of new pros working effectively with Dedanists' Foundation funding to revive the fortunes of junior tennis at their respective clubs.

Good contingents of juniors came up to London from Bristol, Oratory and Canford and all enjoyed the fact that so many young players were there from so many different clubs.

Junior Singles Championships

at Queens Club

The British Junior Handicap Singles Tournament 2022

Above: Some of the spectators & players on court (including the Cambridge dog)! Far left: B Grade finalists, Ryan & Felix .Left: A Grade finalists, Archer(winner) & Algie.

There was an excellent entry of 28 junior players for the 2022 National Junior Handicap Singles event, held at the Wellington court over the weekend of December 10th/11th. These young players came from a wide variety of clubs across the country.

In the “B” grade final Ryan Bennett (Wellington) defeated Felix Lawry (RTC) 8-4. In the main competition, the highlight of the quarter-finals was a great match between two future stars of the game Max Warner (Queen’s) & Algie Nottingham (Wellington). Superb tennis played off handicap by young players just 11 and 13 years old! The main competition final was a one-sided affair with Archer Wyld (Wellington) looking extremely dangerous off of a 63 handicap! He defeated a flagging Algie Nottingham 6-0 to lift the trophy and title. Prizes were presented by Paul Weaver (T&RA Director of Junior Tennis and Dedanists’ Foundation Ambassador). He took the opportunity to thank the Foundation for their continued support of this important junior event and for all the other good work that they do for junior real tennis.

The Diamond Patron Scheme

We are funded entirely by donations. Previously, all our donors have been Founder Patrons. Some people wished to give more, so we introduced the Diamond Patron scheme which recognised the extra generosity of these donors. We are most grateful to all our generous Patron’s for their support.

“Our objective is to get younger people impassioned about our sport.”

We have produced a short booklet as a guide to help those who wish to leave donations to The Dedanists’ Foundation in their will. The booklet explains how to do this and provides helpful information.

All donations are greatly appreciated and will help us to give more young people from all backgrounds an equal opportunity to play this great game.

Leave a Legacy Gift in your Will