23 January 2023 | Tennis Victoria

Tennis Victoria’s Future Leaders Program enables our next generation of volunteers to work closely with our local tennis clubs in creating welcoming environments on and off the tennis court.

Future Leaders has been running since 2001, and since that time we’ve had over 500 participants take part in the program, who have given back over 21,000 hours of volunteer time to local tennis clubs across Victoria.

Today, our Future Leaders cohort headed to Melbourne Park for their Infosys AO Experience. Infosys continued their partnership with the Australian Open and helped implement today’s experience for the Future Leaders participants.

The day started with a clinic on Showcourt 3 with a coach for an hour skills session. They were greeted by a special guest, Casey Delaqua who joined in and helped coach the session.

Paris, Lottie, Serena and Georgia from the Future Leaders program were excited by Casey’s appearance.

“It was amazing to meet Casey Dellacqua. She was lovely and we all had a lot of fun”, Paris said.

“It was a really big surprise to have Casey Dellacqua come and visit us and share some of her experiences in tennis with us. I think the advice she shared with us and the fun moments we had will be something we’ll never forget”, Serena said.

The program is designed for Year 10 and 11 students and provides participants with the opportunity to make a difference at their local tennis club. Program participants attend a three day camp, develop important teamwork and leadership skills and work with Tennis Victoria to develop a project plan to take back to their tennis club to complete.

Participants are required to complete a minimum of 40 hours work in completing the project and report back to Tennis Victoria. Upon completion, participants are invited to attend a graduation hosted by Tennis Victoria in recognition for all their hard work.

“From doing my project and being able to work with my club development office and my coach and the Future leaders, we have been able to work out who we are as leaders and we have learnt it’s not about us as leaders, it’s about people who we work with and teaching them to be leaders themselves and through my project I hope to inspire young girls out there to pick up tennis and be involved in the Australian Open Ball kids program which I went through as well”, Serena said.

Lottie and Georgia organised a Club Championships for their club, Eaglemont Tennis Club. They were the tournament directors as part of the project.

“The way was really successful and it was great to be able to do this as part of the Future Leaders program”, Lottie said.

After doing a camp with the Future Leaders cohort last year, today was a way to reconnect with the group and have a fun day together.

“It was great to meet up with the fellow future leaders team and see everyone again. It was a cool experience to play on Showcourt 3 and to play Padel and Pop Tennis.”

The team had the Pop Tennis and Padel Courts to themselves this morning as they were in before the gates opened.

They also visited the Infosys activations experiencing Virtual Reality.

“The virtual reality is really cool and we all had fun pretending to play on Rod Laver Arena!” Paris said.

At the end of the session, the Future Leaders group were surprised with tickets to Rod Laver Arena for the day session which they were all so excited about.

If you would like more information or for any further enquiries please contact Tennis Victoria at [email protected]