Six resurfaced courts and free coaching on Saturday mornings.
The six tennis courts in Riverside Park reopened on Saturday morning after a four-month refurbishment, and within an hour every one of them was taken. By ten o’clock, around sixty children aged between five and fifteen had signed up for the first of the free coaching sessions that will now run on the courts every Saturday until the end of March.
The courts, which sit on the flat ground between the Ardle and the park’s boating lake, had been closed since the summer after years of complaints about cracked surfaces, sagging nets and puddles that took days to drain. Two of the six had been out of use altogether for more than a year after tree roots lifted the asphalt along the baseline.
What has changed
The work, which cost £310,000, was paid for jointly by City Hall and the regional tennis association, with a smaller contribution from a sports charity. Contractors dug out the old surface, installed new drainage beneath the courts and laid a porous acrylic finish in two shades of blue, with the junior court markings for younger players painted in a lighter colour alongside the full-size lines.
Other improvements include new nets and posts, LED floodlights on four of the courts, a low fence separating the junior area from the path to the lake, and a small storage shed for coaching equipment. Two of the courts have been fitted with lines for pickleball, a paddle sport that has been growing quickly among older players in the city.
“For years these courts were somewhere you went if you had nowhere else. Now they’re as good as anything in the region, and they’re free to use. That matters in a part of the city where a lot of families can’t afford club fees,” said Tobias Ferreira-Lund, the city’s sports development officer.
Mr Ferreira-Lund said the floodlights would be on until nine in the evening on weekdays and that the courts would remain bookable online, with three of the six kept free for turn-up-and-play at all times.
Saturday mornings
The free coaching is the part of the scheme that has generated most interest. Sessions are split into three age groups – five to seven, eight to eleven and twelve to fifteen – each lasting an hour, starting at nine. Rackets and balls are provided, and no previous experience is needed. Four qualified coaches will lead the sessions, supported by volunteers from the Calder Lawn Tennis Club, which has agreed to offer subsidised junior membership to any child who wants to continue.
The first session had the feel of a fete. Parents lined the fence with coffees from the park kiosk, small children chased bright foam balls around the mini-courts, and the older group worked through a rally drill under the watchful eye of head coach Nadia Kowalczyk-Reyes, who has run junior programmes in the valley for twelve years.
“The rule today is that everyone hits the ball before they leave,” she said, between whistles. “Some of them have never held a racket. By the end of the hour, they were serving. That’s the best feeling in coaching.”
Among the youngest players was seven-year-old Esme, who had come with her grandfather after seeing the courts being resurfaced on the way to school. Asked what she thought of her first lesson, she said it had been “good, but the ball goes everywhere”.
Keeping it going
Funding for the free coaching is guaranteed until the end of March. City Hall says it will review take-up before deciding whether to extend the programme through the summer, when the courts are traditionally busiest. The regional tennis association has indicated it would like to make the Riverside sessions a permanent fixture and use them as a model for parks in Harrow and the hill towns.
There are also plans for a junior league, with teams from Riverside playing against clubs in Ardle and Port Selwyn in the spring. Organisers hope to field at least four teams across different age groups.
The reopening has not been entirely without grumbles. Some regular adult players say the new booking system makes it harder to get a court on weekday evenings, and a few residents of the flats overlooking the park have raised concerns about the floodlights. The council says the lights are angled downwards and fitted with shields to reduce glare.
For most of the people on the courts on Saturday, though, those were small matters. As the last session finished just after noon, a queue of adults was already waiting at the gate with their rackets.
