Athlone Tennis Club prepares to open new complex

“Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work,” Andre Agassi said in his fantastic memoir 'Open', considered by many as one of the best sports books ever written. “I had to put in the time to get back. And it was a grind.”

The American hero was talking about his comeback, but he could just as easily have been talking about Athlone Tennis Club, who have put in Trojan work in recent times in a bid to upgrade their facilities and make the town a regional centre for the sport.

The club, which has over 300 members, is about to get its just rewards as they prepare to open a new state-of-the-art sports complex in their new home beside Athlone Regional Sports Centre (ARSC).

Looking forward to the official opening date due to be announced later this week, Pat Conway, who heads up the fundraising group and is also a member of the development team in the club, told the Westmeath Independent recently that the new facility, comprising three adult-size tennis courts, three children's courts and a modular new clubhouse, will introduce clay court tennis to Athlone.

“The beauty of these new surfaces will be that they are more fun to play on, because they are slightly slower leading to longer rallies and more competitive games.

“They have the added bonus of being easier on the joints,” he explained, adding that investment in phase one of the project is over half a million euro, excluding the cost of the land.

Athlone Tennis Club, previously located in the grounds of Athlone GAA Club, is fortunate to only have to move around the corner thanks to a 50-year lease agreed with Westmeath County Council for land beside ARSC.

“We will in fact establish ourselves as the regional centre for the whole Midlands area when we have this club going. Our tennis courts themselves will be superb, we also have a strategic plan to build further courts under a dome,” continued Mr Conway, who said the new base for tennis in the town will bring more visibility to club and will, hopefully, boost numbers playing tennis in Athlone it its first year of operation.

He is hugely proud that the club was able to pull off a project of such magnitude, attracting grants of more than €330,000 to Athlone from Leader, the department's Sports Capital Programme and Westmeath County Council that might not have come here otherwise. Added to this, the club membership raised substantial funds via a bond scheme to pay for the development.

“In fact, if our members had not rallied to the cause at an early stage and put up substantial money, we would not have been able to convince the grant-giving bodies that we were a credible entity that could deliver a project,” Mr Conway emphasised.

That a group of volunteers raised this amount of money in a sport that is still a minority interest is “incredible,” Mr Conway said, but they are not finished yet.

“When we open our facilities they will be magnificent but we will still have to do more work, more fundraising to really complete the project. For example, we will need wind breakers surrounding the entire complex for obvious reasons. We will need to add to our clubhouse with suitable decking and things like a kitchen.”

All the while club members have been working hard to ensure increased inclusivity, running popular beginners nights every Tuesday, partnering with a local DEIS school to introduce tennis to young children as part of their PE programme, and starting a pilot project to introduce the sport to those with a visual impairment, both adults and children.

With huge anticipation about the move to a new home, Mr Conway had some words of thanks for those who have played a big part in helping them get to this stage, not least the development and fundraising teams who drove the project, Westmeath County Council, in particular Director of Services Barry Kehoe who has been “superb” in guiding the club through the grant process, all the local councillors, in particular, Cllr Tom Farrell and Cllr Vinny McCormack, along with Deputy Troy and Minister Burke.

There were thanks too for Killian Consulting Engineers, QS David Martin, Castle Group Modular, who supplied the clubhouse, and Boland Civil Engineering Contractors, the main builders.