Our club is lucky to have on board the services of tennis coach Matthew McGann. Matthew is a professional tennis coach who has a vast knowledge and experience of the game both as a player and a coach. He is a qualified coach having obtained the level 1 and level 2 qualifications from Tennis Ireland and is regularly updating his knowledge and skills.
Matthew is actively involved in developing tennis at all levels and ages within the club. His aim is to increase the number of people playing tennis, raise the standard of play and identify talent within the club.
As a coach, Matthew has raised the level of play amongst our adult members. He has coached many of our juniors to a high regional, provincial and national level. We now have a few juniors competing at European tournaments.
As a player, Matthew has improved with age! He has won numerous local titles as well as multiple national titles and has now been the only person from the west to be selected to play for Ireland at the World Team Tennis Championships.
Louise has an active role in club coaching both adults and juniors. She has gained two Professional Tennis Registry (PTR) qualifications, Adult Development at Professional level and Junior Development at Professional level. She is also qualified to take Cardio Tennis classes.
Louise takes the lead on court at our junior club nights every week and is instrumental at the tennis camps. She coaches many junior squads of various ages. As children progress they feed into Matthew’s performance squads.
With our coaches playing a central role, we believe in having good structures in place at our club which allow juniors to develop and realise their full potential. The first step is to get children and young people to enjoy the game – so particularly in those early years, the emphasis is on FUN. This involves the following-
As children develop and gain confidence, matches are arranged through internal competitions such as the annual Round Robin event or by organising inter-club friendlies with neighbouring clubs such as Sligo, Irvinestown and Omagh.
These squads are for performance players only. Members of these squads are usually near the top of their particular age group and are committed to their training. These groups have a year round training schedule that involves two to four hours coaching a week. Many performance players also receive individual lessons. Our junior performers work very hard!
