With exceptional facilities and dedicated coaches, tennis is offered as an accessible, fun sport for all pupils at all levels throughout the year.
Tennis is an extremely popular sport among boys and girls at Uppingham. We give all pupils the opportunity to play tennis all year round, offering both individual and group lessons. In the summer term, tennis is offered as a games option.
Tennis is an excellent sport, not just for all-round physical fitness, strength and flexibility, but also for mental strength, resilience and resourcefulness. It can be played as an individual sport, which develops particular strategic skills and mental toughness, but also in the doubles format as a way of developing teamwork.
Inter-school fixtures take place in the summer term, offering pupils the chance to experience competitive matches. For any pupils that don’t make it onto a tennis team, we run internal tennis tournaments so that everyone has the opportunity to compete.
Coaching
In January 2019, the school appointed Rich Surtees as its first Director of Tennis. Rich is an LTA Level 5 tennis coach and oversees all of the coaching at Uppingham. Due to the popularity of tennis, we also bring in external tennis coaches to support pupils, as required. All tennis coaches working for the school are LTA qualified.
Facilities
We have 39 tennis courts available to pupils in the summer term; including 12 hard courts next to the USSC, 24 Astroturf courts and three floodlit Savannah courts at the Middle playing fields. We also have links with Corby Tennis Centre, which provides access to eight indoor courts during the winter.
Competitions
During the summer we play regular block fixtures for all ages, with at least 18 teams playing each weekend. These fixtures are all doubles matches, allowing more pupils to play every week.
We also enter the National Schools Competitions for U15 and U18 boys and girls, allowing pupils to play singles as well as doubles. Within school, we run singles, doubles and mixed tournaments for all pupils to enter.