Waiuku Tennis Club celebrated its 100th anniversary this past season and they have plenty of reasons to be positive about what the future holds.

The laying of new courts, which was years in the making, helped kick-off a terrific season and they almost stumbled across the fact the club was 100 years old.

“It was almost an afterthought to be fair,” said president Stephen Booker. “On the back of

COVID and all the lockdowns and everything, people starting to get back into sport and it was kind of after we’d had our grand opening, which was October last year, our secretary looked into the

date and she figured out that we were 100 years in this venue.

“We managed to celebrate it at the end of March this year. I think June would mark the start of the 101st year, so we sort of managed to squeeze it in within those 100 years.

“We invited all of our surviving life members. I think all but one came, and we had a few speeches and bits and pieces and people reflecting on what the club was like over the years.

“We had a few celebrations, including announcing a new life member, which is Nigel Bradley, previous president. He’s been president for about 11 years and done a lot with the club.

“We had a few playoffs – it was the end of the summer season, so we had the club champs. We had plenty of people around to watch those, which was quite neat. We also had good weather for a change, so it was a really nice day for the club.”

The court refurbishment took an enormous amount of work for the committee as they attempted for years to raise the funds. After a long process they were able to commence work in September last year.

“We’ve replaced our four main courts with new Astroturf,” Booker explained. “That was probably on the back of about five years of fundraising, working bees, bits and pieces just to try and get ahead.

“Previous attempts for funding included two applications with the Lotteries foundation, which unfortunately were unsuccessful. The courts were over $100,000, and each quote we requested to satisfy the granting agencies were going up in line with inflation so the target was creeping away from us.

“It wasn’t until we split the grant requests up into smaller chunks – asked for $30K here and $20K there, along with our substantial deposit. That we managed to get it across the line.”

It wasn’t just admin work the club had to do – they mucked in using the typical Kiwi attitude made famous in our small towns as they found ways to save money.

“We saved about $15K just ripping up the courts ourselves – the old turf,” Booker said. “It’s a hell of a process – it’s a sand filled astroturf. Each square meter of turf is about 28kg. So, you’re talking of a massive effort with tractors, trucks, trailers and manual labour. We cut and rolled the turf up into manageable chunks and tied them all up with farmers bailing twine and we had the locals take their own piece of turf away.”

“Nigel did a Facebook post saying free turf, pick up yourself and he organized all the people with trailers and trucks, and they come in and they took away what they needed. They used it for their dog runs or chook runs or flooring for pole sheds. All manner of things, and we got most of it taken away for free, which was a massive saving for us and prevented it going to landfill.

With the new courts now in use, the club has started looking to the future, about new projects and initiatives to drive membership and to bring in income.

“The club is in a pretty good place financially,” he said. “We’ve actually got a really good membership, the biggest in a while in terms of numbers on the books. Hopefully we can keep that up with everyone seeming to be busier this year.”

“We’ve got a few more projects coming up. We’re going to replace our lights. The new sort of led lights as the old bulbs are getting harder to source and are not lasting so well.”

In addition to that, Booker wants to make the venue more family friendly, and is positioning the club towards this, with a comfortable area upstairs for the little ones, to watch a movie while Mum and Dad play tennis.

There’s a new swing he installed in the oak tree, which is well used by kids, and they’ve continued their commitment to support the community by opening up the venue up to football and hockey teams to train on during the winter months.

“Waiuku Tennis Club is an amazing little club tucked away in the middle of town, we would love to see you visit. All welcome. Let’s support it so we can write history in Waiuku for another 100 years.”