GTC head calls on SVGTA to wake up

Head of the Grassroot Tennis Club (GTC) Grant Connell is calling on the Brian Nash executive of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Tennis Association (SVGTA) to get out of its prolonged slumber and serve the business of tennis to St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Speaking directly to the inactivity of the association and lack of hosting tournaments, Connell stated: “We have gone off track; in fact, we have moved backwards… More courts, fewer tournaments”.

Relating to the showpiece event, the annual International Tennis Federation’s Junior Tournament, Connell observed, “The sport is bigger than all of us… We simply cannot lose the ITF tournament… It is a major contributor to the sports calendar.”

The GTC’s head is therefore asking those in critical positions to up their game and save the flagship event, as according to him, “This will be the nail in the coffin for tennis in St Vincent and the Grenadines”.

Connell is also making a second pitch to the national tennis body, to reconsider the GTC’s proposal to adopt the stadium court at the National Tennis Centre.

“We at the GTC had offered to adopt the stadium court for a five-year period and use the facility as its base, since we were evicted from the Haddon Hotels courts on Murray’s Road … The use of the court was mainly on Saturdays between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and Mondays to Fridays, 4 to 6 p.m.,” Connell recalled.

“In fact, as a set-off, I proposed that the club would have adopted the entrance lawn as well… We had also proposed that we subsidize the cost of coaches’ fees, thereby allowing children who cannot afford to play the game and unearth their talent on the court,” he added.

“We have to agree on these courts, that the courts at the centre are in need of care, and we should swiftly more towards maintaining the aesthetics and the centre’s status as one of the best in the Eastern Caribbean and at the same time, not allow for the sport to die a natural death, because budding tennis players cannot play tennis because they cannot afford the coaches’ fees,” Connell complained.

Connell believes that the woes of the SVGTA can be addressed, but the changes have to come from within.

“We have to put petty differences aside and clash of personalities in the interest of development… Personal interest in self and child have taken over the love for the sport and the development of the same,” Connell noted.