Interest high as Tennis Club gets set to welcome new members

Restrictions in place at present but play continuing

Cavan Lawn Tennis Club is expecting a rise in membership from next week on as it begins to open its doors to new members once again.

The Cavan Town-based club, formed in 1888 and one of the oldest in the country, has been very busy since re-opening to members in line with Phase 1 of the government’s easing of lockdown restrictions and, according to treasurer Bernice Clarke, they have been flooded with enquiries from potential new recruits, especially since the recent fine weather commenced.

“We have only two tennis courts in action at the minute because the other two are being resurfaced and then we have the two Padel courts up the back,” she explained.

“We were allowed to re-open from the first phase but with some restrictions in place. Tennis Ireland have given very good guidelines, the main thing was that you had to have a booking system so they could do contact tracing if it was needed, and it was only open to current members.

“Our membership had expired during the lockdown so we decided to extend the membership up until June 8 because that’s when Phase 2 begins. That’s when new guidelines will be introduced and we think that we will be able to open it up to new members as well as existing members.

“As I said, at the minute it’s just members who are playing. You have to book online and there’s an hour allotted per court, with a 15-minute gap. That’s to stop people meeting as such.”

The club has been opening at 5pm each evening and the courts have been packed, with high demand exacerbated by the fact that three of the courts are currently out of action.

“Because the three courts are being resurfaced and the builders are there during the day, for insurance reasons and so on we haven’t opened the facility during the day but we have opened it up from 5pm every evening. From 5-7pm, it is reserved for families because anybody under the age of 18 has to be supervised.

“From 7pm onwards then it’s prioritised for adult members. Every evening has been booked out and every Saturday and Sunday has been booked out so far and there has been an influx of people trying to get in on the system and book through the website.

“We have a really good booking system. We have to just tell new members that they can’t come until June 8.

“At the minute we are only allowed to play singles and doubles if you’re from the same household. Hopefully from next week we hope it will be doubles all round, you won’t have to be from the same household, that’s the plan anyway.”

Membership is strong at present and the club are optimistic that it will grow further this summer.

“We do hope so. The summer would have always been busy with the juniors, they would have played a lot of tennis and there would have been a lot of coaching and camps.

“We think it might flip, we may get less juniors because we have less to offer the juniors this year but we have more to offer adults so we think we will get a huge increase in adult membership.

“Membership is very good, we have 50 or 60 families, 50 or 60 adults and over 100 juniors.

All the tournaments have been cancelled for the foreseeable future. I would like to think that there would be some in-house tournaments as such but I can’t see the big one [Cavan Open] going ahead.”