Narrabri Tennis farewelled 2022 in style when it hosted its final school holiday clinic of the year from Monday, December 19 to Thursday, December 22, at the Dangar Park Tennis Centre.
The clinic formed part of the club’s Australian Open holiday program, and there were more than 50 junior tennis players in attendance each day.
The keen youngsters were put through their paces by Narrabri Tennis’ head coach, Shane Murphy, and his assistant clinic coaches Callum Wales, George Bennett, Ava Garbutt, Lily Campbell and Jack Hartnett.
The clinic focused on many areas of the sport, such as forehand and backhand technique, rallying, serving, net play, footwork and court awareness.
“It was a good way to finish a great year,” Murphy told The Courier.
“We saw a lot of new faces and a lot of old faces as well, and a few players who’d stopped playing but have come back.
“It’s been good numbers considering we are close to Christmas and we have people going away on holidays.
“The kids all love the holiday clinics. We have a lot of fun here, and they get to learn a bit of tennis.”
Murphy was also full of praise for his coaches.
“They are sensational,” he said of Callum, George, Ava, Lily and Jack.
“They know exactly what I want. I can give them a bit of paper that’s got our program on it and they know how to run it the way it should be run.”
The Narrabri Tennis head coach was pleased with the year the club had experienced in 2022, from positive numbers and improvement at private lessons and hot shots classes to well-run tournaments at the local tennis centre and also positive results for many local juniors at tournaments outside of Narrabri.
Murphy said that he hoped 2023 would deliver much of the same.
“We’ve got all of the big North West series coming up. Narrabri’s got a couple of the RMS events coming up again,” Murphy said.
“Our Friday afternoon matchplay will kick off again, and hopefully, the senior comp for the club will kick off again now that the new fences are in at the centre.”
Before the excitement of all of that arrives at the Dangar Park Tennis Centre, Narrabri Tennis will host the second clinic of its Australian Open holiday program next week.
