Thirteen Years at Syston

Yesterday, after 13 years, I resigned from Syston Northfields Tennis Club. I wanted to stop for a moment and reflect on what those 13 years have meant to me.

When I started at Syston thirteen years ago, I was the youngest head coach in the county. I was even warned against taking the job.

I would drive 45 minutes from home, sit in the clubhouse and hope that the advertising I'd done had worked and that somebody would actually walk through the gates.

At the time, I needed to turn tennis coaching into a full-time job. All I had was a Saturday morning programme. The odd player would turn up to the odd group, and I'd head home at the end of the day with £5 or £10 in my pocket.

Then one player became two.

Two became three.

The players enjoyed their sessions and told their friends. Parents read the flyers I had hand-delivered to local schools. Slowly, something started to grow.

Thirteen years later, around 100 juniors attend group lessons, with some coming two or three times a week, alongside a large number having private coaching.

I went from not knowing whether anyone would turn up, while working part-time as a support worker to make ends meet, to needing assistant coaches, then part-time coaches, and eventually a team of fully qualified coaches working full-time.

That's more than I ever imagined possible at a small four-court club that had struggled to attract juniors.

And somewhere along the way, I met my wife at the club.

We now have two amazing children of our own.

Proud

When I look back, there are a huge number of things that make me proud.

We built a vibrant junior programme and introduced hundreds of children to tennis.

We introduced new adults and parents to the game, many of whom went on to become members themselves. We persuaded parents who had played tennis when they were younger to pick up a racket again — and many of them never looked back.

We developed relationships with local organisations and businesses, including creating a valuable revenue stream for the club through the clubhouse and helping establish The Secret Café with the adult day care provider using the facility.

More than 20 tennis leaders became qualified.

Ten players I mentored went on to become LTA Level 1, 2 or 3 coaches, half of them women — something I'm particularly proud of because developing the next generation of coaches is just as important as developing players.

We took older juniors to tournaments, including a trip to Cardiff.

Four players I coached eventually made their way to play at Wimbledon in the Play Your Way to Wimbledon competition.

Players represented the county and won county titles.

We rebuilt programmes and coaching teams after losing coaches and through the challenges of COVID.

I've coached more than 1,000 children through school holiday camps and more than 1,000 juniors through school taster sessions.

We've introduced countless juniors to adult team tennis, giving them far more than just tennis skills — confidence, responsibility, resilience, communication and the experience of being part of a team.

Our junior teams have won numerous league divisions, and at times Syston has had as many junior teams competing as some of the biggest clubs in the county.

I continued to represent the club year after year in the County leagues, even when, medically, I was told that I reallly should not.

I've been runner-up for LTA Coach of the Year twice, in 2022 and 2025, from more than 500 coaches nominated each year.

And perhaps most importantly, I believe we gave Syston a future.

A tennis club needs juniors coming through of all ages if it is going to thrive long-term. When I arrived, that was one of the biggest challenges facing the club.

To have helped turn that around, and to have seen it continue consistently for so many years, is something I will always be incredibly proud of.

Some of the things I'm proudest of can't really be put into a list. It's watching juniors I've coached for 10 or 12 years grow from nervous little children into young adults, and then seeing them leave for university excited to continue their tennis journey. Knowing that tennis has become something they want to carry with them into the next chapter of their lives is incredibly rewarding.

It's the lifelong friendships I've watched develop between players.

The friendships between parents.

The children who arrived nervous and shy and gradually found their confidence.

The players who stayed with me for years and grew from little children into young adults.

And seeing my own children look up to members of my coaching team.

Those things mean more to me than any award.

Beyond Syston

The work at Syston also opened doors to opportunities I could never have imagined when I first sat in that clubhouse wondering whether anyone would turn up.

I've coached county teams, Invictus Games athletes, Paralympians and celebrities.

I've mentored coaches to help them deliver tennis to players with learning disabilities.

I've been able to work with people and organisations well beyond Syston, while still being able to call the club home.

In many ways, Syston became the foundation for everything that followed.

Through it all

There is another part of the story that is difficult to separate from the tennis.

When I started at Syston, I was only 12 months removed from four years of being laid up after five major leg operations. These were needed as I had a condition called Perthes Disease as a child and between the ages of 5 and 8 I was in a wheelchair and on crutches, unable to walk unaided.

Before long, my hips were painful again.

I coached through the pain, in all weathers, day and night.

In 2017, I had both hips replaced. After the second operation, I developed abdominal sepsis, requiring emergency surgery and time in intensive care.

Within weeks of each operation, I was back on court. Sometimes I couldn't stand for long and had to coach from a stool. I was back doing administration within days.

Since then, I've lived with chronic spine pain. My spine had a lot of congenital problems that I didn’t realise until the scans.

This July, I had spinal fusion surgery. Even from my hospital bed, I was still sorting out club administration.

A few weeks later, I helped organise the junior county championships.

Five weeks after surgery, I ran the Syston club tournament — again, probably sooner than my doctors would have liked.

Next year, I'm due to have both jaw joints replaced because of severe arthritis.

In 2022, just a couple of months after having the nerves in my lower spine frozen, I ran the London Marathon without any training and raised nearly £3,000 for Get Kids Going.

A large amount of that money came from Syston parents.

I'm not saying any of this for sympathy.

I'm saying it because tennis coaching really does become your life. It isn't just a job.

There is rarely a proper break.

Messages come in at all hours from new and existing players and parents. There is always another tournament to organise, another player to help, another coach to support, another programme to develop and something new and exciting around the corner.

For 13 years, I never really stopped to look at what had happened.

Yesterday, for the first time, I did.

And when I look back at that young coach driving 45 minutes to a four-court club, sitting in an empty clubhouse and hoping somebody would walk through the door, I don't think he could have imagined where it would lead.

He couldn't have imagined the hundreds and hundreds of children he would coach.

The players who would get to play on the Wimbledon grass courts.

The coaches he would help develop.

The friendships.

The teams.

The parents.

The opportunities.

The awards.

The injuries.

The operations.

The hospital beds.

The marathon.

Or that he would eventually meet his wife there and have two children of his own.

Most of all, he couldn't have imagined how much Syston would become part of his life.

So, after 13 years, it feels strange to say that chapter is coming to an end.

But I'm incredibly proud of what we built.

And I will always be grateful to everyone who was part of it.