From: The Racketeer 23, February 1997
Members Make a Club
Secretary's Report 1997
by Chris Weir
I'D LIKE to take this opportunity to look, not so much at the tennis aspect of the club, but at the membership itself, and all the activities that the membership generates. In many ways it is the members, with all their different personalities, characters and interests that make a club unique. Every club has a number of tennis courts and a clubhouse of some kind, but it is the individual members that make a club special and which make one club very different from another.
The uniqueness of Mapperley Park's membership, with all its personalities, is of course well celebrated in print, in that 'noble organ', The Racketeer, which combines the up-to-the minute news content of The Times, with the prestige of Hello magazine and the 'street-cred' of Private Eye; and which flourishes under the ever observant eye of our very own Andy Lusis; and to whom we owe special thanks for all his hard work. And it is in The Racketeer that many of the membership's activities are recorded. Incidentally, if you haven't featured in the Racketeer yet, please don't worry, your time will probably come (or perhaps you should worry!).
If you read the Racketeer or get chatting to people at the club, it is soon evident that there's lots happening. There are bridge playing evenings, social evenings (the one organised by Cynthia Lindo towards the end of last year being a notable success); there's the annual dinner, the open day, the jumble sales (for which thanks to all the helpers involved), the quiz nights (admirably hosted by our Quiz Queen, Diane Fieldhouse); there's President's Day, which combines the pleasures of tennis with those of food, drink and sociability; there's also the crossword competitions, and there's the inter-club quiz team that marches triumphantly on to victory after victory.
The club's coaching activities also include an important social element, especially the very successful junior coaching that has introduced so many new faces to the club. And on this subject I'd like to thank, on behalf of the club, Liz May, Malcolm Turner and all their helpers, who have developed junior coaching so well over the past year. And in the coming year we even have the prospect of entering a team in the Junior League.
The upsurge of interest in juniors in the club, for which Liz May and the Junior Sub-Committee can take great credit, has, I believe, been significant in the general rise in the number of members over the past year. At the beginning of 1996 membership stood at 193, but by the end of 1996 it stood at 222.
On a separate issue, I'd like to thank Nicola Melbourne for designing our new club logo, introduced at the beginning of 1996, which provides the club's posters, letter heads, fixture cards and other materials with a bright, modern image.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that there is a lot going on at Mapperley Park Tennis Club, much of it behind the scenes, but all of it vital to the club's health. But above all what is vital for the future of Mapperley Park is the involvement of its members. Both in the tennis played at the club and in all the other activities going on. We may not be the biggest club in Nottinghamshire but we can still be a club that has lots to offer.