There are four times as many boys playing tennis in the UK compared to girls, so what is the reason for this and what can British tennis coaches do about increasing the numbers? I always like to write about topical items that I’m involved with and we recently did a survey of the number of girls in our programme at Stony Stratford Tennis Club.

John Cavill

We seem to be attracting a slightly higher percentage of girls than the national average with 28% of our weekly development programme being females. The percentage then drops rapidly if you look at the number of teenage girls, which only account for 5% of the programme. In our competition programme which is designed for those wanting to regularly compete, we have 50 players of which 8 are girls.

I would highly recommend that any coach takes an hour to study the stats of their programme as it gives you a clear picture of the programme demographics and areas you may wish to improve on. From the information I have gathered, we decided that we need to increase in the numbers of girls playing from the ages of 5 to 9 years old. The reason for targeting this age group is because those who are still playing as teenagers all started when they were under 10 and those that wish to compete also tend to start playing when they are young. By increasing the base of under 10 girl tennis players, we increase our chances of retaining more girls into their teenage years and more that want to compete. We have also seen that girls like to be with other girls so if you have a group who grow up together and are friends, that social element counts for so much if they are to continue playing for many years.

Off the back of this information, Tennis Works have recently launched an ambitious scheme aimed at encouraging more girls to take up tennis which starts in primary schools across Milton Keynes. We have also secured support and funding from the club, the Bucks Lawn Tennis Association and local schools. The project which is title ‘Girls Tennis’ aims to introduce more than 1,000 girls to the sport in its early stages.

The project has three phases; schools, free demo, club coaching.

I compiled a database of schools and created a letter explaining the scheme, opportunities and benefits which was emailed to the school. The scheme starts with fun coaching sessions at the schools which last for 30 minutes each and are aimed at girls in years 1, 2 and 3 (ages 4-8). The best way to fit the sessions in with the schools is to run them during their PE session. For that session, the class would be split into boys and girls of which the PE teacher would take the boys and we would coach the girls. The feedback from the girls is great as they loved having a sports session without boys! We have to maybe go into the school over 3 different afternoons due to the timings of their PE sessions, but this worked well for everyone. At the end of the day all the girls went home with a letter selling the benefits of tennis and offering a free ‘girls only’ session at the club.

The parents then sign their daughter up via the contact details on the letter (we use an online form but an email address is also effective) and we communicate further with them on which day their free session will be. So far, this is where we are with the scheme and we are going into a number of schools over a 6 week period to promote Gils Tennis before the free demo sessions at the club start.

Once everyone has attended the free session we will offer them opportunities to continuing playing at the club with a subsidised ‘Girls only’ course that runs in small blocks of 6 weeks. The reason for this is that it keeps the course cost low, girls much prefer being in groups with other girls and the parents feel happy about not committing to a long term programme until their daughter has settled in.

With female participation in tennis being far less than it is with males, the only way this will be addressed is with the commitment of the schools, parents, coaches and club. Tennis is a great game and it’s not about looking for the next Maria Sharapova but to increase female participation for the enjoyment and health benefits tennis provides.

Our target is to get at least 45 new girls playing regularly at the tennis club which will increase our girl participation figures to around 45% from 28%.

I hope that this article helps you reflect on what can be done in your own programme which will have both financial and sporting benefits for the future.