By Dale Budge

Lynette Johnston has come the full circle as she helps lift Counties Tennis back to the halcyon days when she was the number one ranked player in the country and was winning national titles while playing in the region.

Johnston hails from the Counties Manukau region, growing up on the Awhitu Peninsula and learning to play tennis at the small rural Pollok club.

She was a stand-out player, representing Counties at a young age and becoming the number one ranked player in New Zealand by the time she was 12, before transferring to Auckland to train and play and going on to win half a dozen Junior National Titles.

Coaching and life took her overseas for 15 years before returning home to the Counties area.

She first started working with Pukekohe Tennis Club and then Counties Tennis to lift the sport out of the doldrums.

Five years ago, when she started coaching at Pukekohe, there were about 20 juniors and six interclub teams. Johnston has grown those numbers to well over 140 juniors and currently 19 interclub teams, making Pukekohe easily the biggest and strongest club in the region, with year-round programs catering for all ages and abilities.

“Thirty years ago, Counties Tennis was a major player and there were all these little clubs but now many of them aren’t functioning anymore,” Johnston told Counties Sports Hub.

“I wasn’t the only national champion to have come from the area, we had a history of national players before me. Counties was always known to be a vibrant strong tennis region both competitively and socially.

“What we are trying to do now is turn around Counties Tennis to make it a vibrant force in the community again and encourage people to pick up a racquet, get out on their local courts, having some fun.

“The chances of us pulling out another national champion is remote but it is great to be assisting kids into sports scholarships, and jobs, with the disciplines of high performance tennis developing their life skills and preparing them for the future.

“Tennis has given me massive opportunities both nationally and internationally.

“It is a lifelong sport, fully enjoyed by all ages and abilities, and it doesn’t have a short shelf life like many other contact sports.”

Johnston has put together Counties programmes for U11s, U13s, U15s, U17/19s over the past five years and has seen significant growth and development in the calibre of the local players, giving the top players opportunities to train, travel and experience tennis outside the Counties region.

“The big focus has been introducing a free tennis programme into local primary schools funded by CLM Community Sport and getting 6–8-year-olds into the Tennis New Zealand Hot Shots programme run at their local club,” she explained. Here they develop their skills and progress to playing in the local Counties junior interclub competition.”

From there each club is asked to nominate their top players into the Counties Regional development squad programmes for each age group, female and male. These top 6-8 players train all year around. The top four players in each age group are then selected to represent Counties.  These Counties teams play other regional teams that include Northland, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and the like.

Counties Tennis currently has established clubs at Pukekohe, Waiuku, Patumahoe, Pukekohe East, Papakura, Hunua, Runciman and Bombay.  Each club runs fun, social competitions such as business house, and have competitive teams involved in the junior and senior Counties interclub competitions.

Johnston has been instrumental to the setup of a premier competition played on Friday nights at the Counties tennis centre, with teams of two from the region’s top players competing. Grade 1 also takes place on Friday night at the complex – making the Counties tennis centre the place to be to see the best tennis the region has to offer on Friday nights.

She has also been instrumental in moving Grade 2 to Thursday nights to allow more senior players to compete and keeping their weekends free for family/junior sports time.

Grade 3 takes place Saturday afternoon while the remaining junior grades are staged on Saturday mornings throughout the various clubs in the region with the exception of beginners, which is played Friday afternoon at Counties Tennis Centre.

“The Counties Interclub changes are working well, always a work in progress”, laughed Johnston. “But it is great to see growth and good tennis played. We have new social and competitive competitions in the pipeline to reach more of the wider community to get more people out on the court”. 

Johnston is also resurrecting ladies tennis in the region with Friday morning coaching offered at the Counties Tennis Centre, and evening and day classes run. They also aim to restart a local social midweek ladies competition in the near future.

It’s been hard, but we are making a comeback, turning tennis around,” Johnston said.

Coming up: 

•             The rep sides will travel to Whangarei to play against Northland in March before hosting Waikato at home in Pukekohe.

•             Interclub games have restarted

•             Interclub finals will take place 6th and 13th of March

•             Local Club Champs will be Mid to late March

•             Ladies Friday tennis has started

If you want to join a club or get out on your local court, enquiries please phone Dorota on 0272252358 or email admin@countiestennis.co.nz | www.countiestennis.co.nz.