Tennis
All smiles at Redditch HDA

By Liam Moakes 28/08 Updated: 28/08 16:38

Buy photos » The HDA juniors with their coach Tony Ravenscroft. (s)

THERE has been plenty to celebrate at Redditch HDA Tennis Club, which has received top honours from the South Warwickshire Summer Tennis League.

The league presented a top administration award - the Millennium Scroll - for the best individual administrator of 2012 in the league to HDA's Darren Cutler, who was the choice of league secretary Corin Bishop.

Darren had been a captain and the contact for HDA for the last 15 years and as such is one of the longest serving members of the league in this position.

He had an impeccable record this year and over many of the other seasons and has led his club admirably and helped build it up to its current position and thoroughly deserves this award.

Further to this, the league secretary also decided to give the King Cup to HDA Redditch, along with the title Club of the Year for 2012.

This is only the third occasion that both awards were given to one club in the same year, with Studley 2006 and Shipston 2007 being the others.

This decision was based first by eliminating clubs who did not enter the Junior League and also any that had been fined for rule infringements during 2012 and/or caused problems for the league administrators.

This left only seven out of 22 clubs in contention. In fairness to others, previous winners were then discounted in order to spread the rewards, leaving only three clubs who are worthy of mention - Redditch HDA, Littletons and Snitterfield.

The HDA team of captains, contacts and coaches clinched the deal with excellent communication from Darren Cutler and Paul Green from the B Team for the men and Tony Ravenscroft for the Juniors.

HDA were the only club to enter three teams into the Junior League in 2012, which all reached the play-off semi-finals and HDA C reached the final.

HDA have developed over the last 15 years from a small, run down club with poor quality courts to a strong outfit with new courts and floodlights and are fully deserving of their title Club of the Year 2012.