On Friday 19th June, we were delighted to receive Anne Milton MP at the club during one of our organised junior coaching afternoons.  The weather was kind and Anne was able to see one of three weekly after-school coaching sessions that we run for our junior members.  With 7 coaches on all 6 courts, we were able to show Anne how it is possible to entertain and coach  the 54 juniors that were there on the day all at once.

Anne was met by members of the club committee as well as a selection of our coaching team.  She also took time to meet with some of our youngest juniors on Court 1. 

At a time when MPs are coming under great scrutiny, it is great to be able to meet our local MP and find her to be charming, down to earth and throroughly interested in what we are achieving at Pit Farm.  

Durng Anne's visit, Steve Knight (Chairman) and Peter Sales (President) spoke to Anne about the club's desire to increase court time in the winter months to the benefit of our juniors and adults, by installing additional floodlights on courts 1 and 2.  The lack of natural light means that from 4p.m. onwards for a significant part of the year the club is down to 3 usable courts.  Clearly it is not possible to entertain anything like the 50+ juniors we routinely see at our summer sessions with just 3 floodlit courts.  Anne Milton was able to give some very valuable advice to the club on how we may be able to secure our ambitions and we thank her for this. Thank you also to Voytek Sarama and his coaching team, to our juniors for their enthusiasm at all sessions (not just the one that Anne visited), for the committee for making Anne feel very welcome, to Richard Clarke and Laura Anderson for the photographs and to Bernice Miles and Nicki Seys for the tea and cake. 

Photographs of the afternooon can be seen below.