National Junior Teams Event a Positive but receives little support from TNZ.

One of the best events to aspire to for Juniors are the National Teams event.Sadly over the years it has lacked support from Tennis New Zealand. Regions such as Southern struggle to send teams  with costs to attend a 4 day event over 700.00 per player. TNZ used to allocate funding however I believe this has been dropped over the past couple of seasons.

I can tell you that a lot of juniors playing tennis have a goal to represent their region and this creates huge incentive to play tennis, attend tournaments and of course coaching.This event used to be played in January usually following a National tournament the powers that be decided to play the event in April.

 Team members played the National Tournaments and the 4s and 5s of the team received valuable experience by doing so and then competed in the teams events.To play the nationals now one has to play the event in January which is sometimes unaffordable,by having them back to back was sensible for players, coaches and parents.Ruthless coaches may not play their number 5 for the whole teams event making it questionable for parents to commit their child to such an expense with out playing a match!(in fact this week I had a parent seeking advice as their child would be going as NO 5)

How many players of the regions teams for April did not play the Nationals in January? The Southern region for a start is disadvantaged with distance and of course costs to attend.Should TNZ not see this as a priority to give something back to regions.

This is a big event and for a competitive junior who may not be seeking a College Scholarship or ITF junior tournaments its these our every day club player that needs support. I can tell you that over the years the keenest and hardest workers are the 3s 4s and 5s of a regional team but often its the NO 1s that dictate a team and often built around their commitments.I can tell you now that your Regional team is not how good your number 1 is but how good your number 4 is.

The other question is why am I the only person bringing this attention it deserves , its because a lot of regions and association have no backbone to ask and sadly TNZ have no vision in this area...they are too busy working on what time afternnoon and morning tea should be scheduled!

Do you not think isolated regions such as Southern deserve some help for their teams? Mismanagement lack of vision has certainly hurt regions such as Southern , if tennis was more of a higher profiled sport debacles like the Southern Region would make Headlines around the country.

This needs to be looked at urgently or this event will be just too expensive to attend and we will be losing players to other sports!