News
Presidents Message
Welcome to the 2024 tennis season!
I want to thank our membership and the board for the confidence they have shown in making me President of our wonderful club for the coming season. We have a great group on the board and with their help, I am planning to make the best tennis club in Toronto even better this year.
Thanks to Gary Ingram our former tennis pro for his years of service to the club. We wish him the best of luck in his new tennis endeavours. We are very fortunate to have two excellent pros taking over from Gary; you will see in their section in the newsletter we will have a much broader range of programming for the coming season. Welcome Sam Jonas and Adam Dykes. Sam and Adam will not have responsibility for maintaining the courts this year.
We have changed responsibility for managing the courts to our General Manager with oversight from the board provided by Past President Barnaby Kalan. Also new for this year, we will be gauging interest in having an additional team at the club playing in the over 55 “C” league. This team will consist of 3 women and 3 men playing weekly during the day. This team may be of interest to members who are recreational players. Priority will be given to people not currently playing on our A and B teams. Your board is hard at work, planning for the new season. We will keep you up to date regularly on additional initiatives we are investigating as the season progresses.
-- John Payne, President
Courts and Clubhouse
We are all anxious to get on the courts as soon as possible and we are doing everything within our power to make this happen. Barnaby Kalan; Past President of the club, has accepted the challenge and is actively talking to the rain gods as well as staying in close contact with our contractor. We have decided to hire Crowell Court Contractors again in 2024, based on the excellent job they did last season. (also thanks to Scott Cathcart for his work on this in past years). We are on Crowell's schedule for Spring maintenance, fourth in line after the Granite, Cricket and the B&R clubs. We hope to open the courts in mid-May. Of course, our opening date is dependent on the amount of rain we get in late April or early May.
A Word from our New Tennis Director, Sam Jonas
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Adam Dykes and I have known each other since we were kids and are very excited to have the opportunity to work together again. Adam and I went to tennis camp together when we were 7 years old and then found ourselves training with the same coach in the same high-performance program as teens. As tennis professionals, we ran ACE Tennis together for over 5 years and are hoping we can bring a positive and engaging environment to the club. We are organizing a new season of events, round robins, team practices and a more comprehensive list of clinics this upcoming season. One of our new clinics that we are offering will be Live Ball; https://www.tptennis.net/liveball.php this super fun, fast fast-paced game will be one of our new clinic offerings at the club this year and I hope you all come out and give it a shot! For complete details on clinics available and information on how to book lessons or clinics, please click on the link. https://www.cottinghamtennis.ca/lessons
Social Events
We are fortunate to have our social maven, Lesley Till back in her role organizing our many social events. She reports a planned list of events to include: an Opening Day RR and social gathering, a Canada Day celebration, a Club activity program associated with the hosting of The Masters Nationals in late August, and an End of Season gathering. Marc will hold his exciting competitive Event on July 17 with CTC vs TL for a Seniors Champion Challenge. Marc will also DJ a club RR which was also a big hit last year. Date TBD. We will be changing our house league to a mixed doubles drop-in event since we found interest waned in the house league later in the season. Details to follow. We will most likely be offering breakfast, lunch or dinner at our events so we can have fun with a variety of menu items. We're looking forward to having many club members come out and join us at these events and are especially excited about the new programming with our new Pros.
Teams
Cottingham ladies will have a daytime team in the A2 division https://tltl.tenniscores.com/?mod=nndz-TjJiOWtOR2sxTnhI and an evening team in Division 5 https://tltl.tenniscores.com/?mod=nndz-TjJiOWtOR2sxTnhI. The men will have teams in the A2 and B2 evening divisions of the Toronto Men's League https://tmtl.tenniscores.com/?mod=nndz-TjJiOWtOR2sxTnhI
We are also considering entering a team in the daytime over 55 league. This year, our tennis pros will be more involved in team practices, guaranteeing us wins in all five leagues! Once we have a more definitive timeline on the club opening date we will send out more information regarding team tryouts/practices which will be held in conjunction with our new tennis professionals.
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General Manager's Michael Badali's Message
Hello everyone, the court attendants and I are looking forward to another great season at Cottingham. The same team will be back and we're sure 2024 will be an even better year!
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Membership
PLEASE, if you have not done so already renew your membership now! It makes Jared Gordon's job and the rest of the board's job so much easier if you do this now. Please remind your friends if you think their email addresses may have changed and they have not received our communications. After the May 1 cut-off, we will then start approaching people on the waiting list and filling our membership but it is a very tight timeline to get people into the club on opening day. You can renew your membership here.
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