Riverside
Festival Weekend
Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th September
It's been a great year for Riverside Tennis Club and there's a lot that needed celebrating. In particular our recent awarding of the 2021 LTA South West Club Of The Year Award. With representatives from both Wiltshire and the Regional LTA making the journey to present us with the awards.
The weekend kicked off with a fun tournament for adults and juniors of all ages. This included mini-tennis, triples, volleyball tennis and 'joker card' tennis. Six teams competed with great enthusiasm with prizes being handed out to the winning team as well as various categories of awards. A big thank you to Liz and Karina who put in a lot of work to make this all run smoothly!
The fun tournament was followed by a free lunch. The social committee worked exceptionally hard to feed close to 100 people on the day! The lunch consisted of a fantastic meat and cheese platter or the choice of sandwiches. Great work social committee! Free Prosecco was served as a thank you to our members for not only staying loyal to us through a tough covid year but have gone above and beyond helping Riverside go from strength to strength.
With prosecco in hand we headed over to courts 7 and 8 for the presentations were held. The presentations began with a tribute and one minute clap celebrating the life of Roger Witt. Roger's contribution to tennis in Salisbury was immense and he will be truly missed.
Sadly our former president and member Jim Rhind-Tutt passed away last year. Jim was a member for over 50 years and was president for 25 years! Jim left some money to Riverside which we thought would be best spent towards a commemorative bench which his nephew Andy Rhind-Tutt presented to the club.
The Wiltshire Club of the Year was then presented by Liz Bissett from Wiltshire LTA to our Head Coach and Coordinator, Carolyn Barry. The South & South West Region Club of the Year was then awarded to our Chairman, Chris Heweitt, by Sharon Heeley who is the Head of that region. The club was praised for its facilites development, quick reactions to covid and membership growth. Sharon was also impresed by our new website, media presence, logo and clothing range all of which have been developed by one of our coaches, Mike Barry.
The official opening of Courts 7 & 8 was then carried out by Keith Chapman and Flossie Demain-Griffiths (our youngest member!) Steve Archer who managed the project then cut the fantastic celebratory cakes made by Pam Bath.
Our club finals began at 2pm and continued all day and on Sunday. Read more about those here.