Catching up with past players!
I hope you are all keeping well in these strange times. Our thoughts are of course still with everybody who continues to be affected by Coronavirus.
Apologies for the gap in blogs – it’s been a strange, mixed up time as it has been for everyone. What’s prompted me to get back to writing down my story was a phone call I received recently. I know I have previously mentioned some of the players I have worked with over my career and how much I have enjoyed the process of refining and honing their game to it’s highest standard. One of those players was Steve Billington. I was recently advertising for a part-time coaching position for one of the venues I work with and who should call me up about it but Steve. Steve is now in his twenties (horrifying!) and has been doing some coaching in the Manchester area. We had a good old catch up and he let me know that another player I had worked with when they were younger – Danny Hawker – was also living in the area and they had been meeting up to play some matches socially. The image of a grown up Steve and Danny playing against each other in a friendly, sociable way made me think back to when I first started working with them both and it was not always so friendly…!
I first met Steve and Danny when I started my programme at the James Alexander Barr Tennis Centre in Colwyn Bay. The centre was recently built and my little programme had grown to encompass some large recreational groups which fed in to several smaller performance groups. Steve and Danny had come up through the programme and been identified as having the right attitude and natural talent to progress to county and national levels. Danny was slightly older than Steve but they would regularly attend the same coaching groups and as they progressed the same tournaments. This created a kind of competitive rivalry between them which quite often wound them both up but was actually very effective in pushing them both to be better! On a number of occasions when Stevie and Danny played each other the main learning was about dealing with set backs, or staying positive when things don’t go your way.
They were both eventually identified as being eligible to receive funding from the LTA for help towards the cost of their coaching. Danny even went on to play against Liam Brody at an international Player Plus event in Nottingham which is incidentally the first time I met Nick Lawrence. It was an interesting match with two left handed players battling it out, Danny loved his backhand and put up a good fight in the second set making his backhand count.
As can happen, eventually both Steve and Danny came to the end of their Tennis journey and went on with their lives while still keeping a hand in playing county tennis.
It’s great to think that something I was a part of many years ago is still a part of their lives and has given them a connection and a skill that they are still able to utilise to this day. I would like to think that they both have fond memories of the time they had being coached by me as I have of a busy, productive part of my career.