It is a great honour and privilege to be elected Yorkshire President, as I have been involved with the County from 10 years old as a junior, attending county training right through my junior years and playing at Park Tennis Club, Brighouse and Huddersfield LTSC. My family have been great supporters of Yorkshire, with my mum helping at short tennis and taking the U18 County team to their County Cup event.
My playing career started a while ago becoming the U12 Yorkshire Girls singles winner and being the first female in the county to go to the U12 National Championships held at Eastbourne. I represented the county at all age groups and was delighted to be in the winning team when we became national winners.
I was awarded a scholarship to Florida where I gained the prestigious National Collegiate Athletic Association All American in both singles and doubles. In 1991, I was part of the winning Ladies County Championships team and in 1988 became the U18 Girls Captain (winning the U18’s national title on two occasions) and in 2003 the Senior Women’s captain winning Winter County Cup but the Summer County Cup was the one we missed out on in my captaincy.
I am a level 5 accredited + tennis coach currently working full time in a secondary school in the PE department. During my coaching career I have always encouraged everyone to play tennis and the clubs that I have worked at to join the LTA and Yorkshire. I started volunteering for Yorkshire back in 2010 joining the council and then the management committee and chairing the Performance committee from 2016 whilst becoming the County Safeguarding Officer to help all our players be safe either at county training or county cup and then with all our registered clubs.
I would like to encourage all to give back to their county, I certainly was encouraged by my family to put back in for all the help, guidance in making a difference to my pathway and opportunities by Yorkshire Tennis. Yorkshire runs through my veins and I am so looking forward to working with our great team of people and building on all the successes of national and international winners and creating opportunity to all in tennis and padel.