Junior Competition

General Information

HPRTC junior completion is run through Eastern Region Tennis (ERT). We have a strong number of juniors with ages from 8 to 17 and a big mix of skills and experience. Eastern Region offer a wide variety of tennis competitions for Juniors in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne on Saturdays and Sundays, boys and girls combinations in either Doubles or Single/Doubles formats.

Teams are selected at the discretion of the Junior Selection Committee. Each team requires a parent to be a team manager to be a contact person for the team. Should no parent be willing to take on this role for a particular team, that team will be withdrawn prior to the start of the season. Parents will also need to commit to a rotating roster for manning the canteen when playing at home. There are plenty of old hands to help you on your first couple of time and it is usually good fun.

Juniors must be financial members of the club to play in this competition.

Contact Information

Junior Convener: James Ni junior@hprtc.org.au

President: Sue Cornish president@hprtc.org.au or 0425 711 364

Commitment to play

Players should understand that:

  • This is club tennis, rather than social or tournament tennis and the intention is to make new friends at the club and enjoy tennis.
  • The selection of teams is not practical if players make it conditional that they play with friends. Whilst we will make every endeavour to accommodate preferences, consideration has to be given to similar standard of ability.
  • Committing to play, means committing to a team, so any second thoughts once a team is created may lead to that team being withdrawn if players have a change of heart. As this is a team sport, this means innocent players miss out.
  • If they think a friend may be playing and if this is important, they should check that is the case and not assume.
  • If there is any information about playing ability that you would like the convenors to know and not guess, please make sure you write it down on the application form.

Teams and team selection

Selecting teams for competition can often be a contentious process but shouldn’t be. There are some guiding principles that the selection committee uses when selecting teams. These guidelines are applied in the following order:

  1. Skill, age and ability
  2. Team availability
  3. Friendship groups
  4. Personal requests

It is important to be aware that the association that governs this competition uses player statistics to determine its recommendation for the level that each player should be at. There is some flexibility in this but the aim is to have competitive tennis for your player and their competitors throughout the season. The ranking is based on singles games won and lost and the average playing position. This information is available to the Junior Selection Committee and is made available to the teams during team selection and halfway through the season for review.

A grading day is typically held 4 to 5 weeks before the teams need to be submitted to ERT for review and confirmation. This is a fun day where the juniors pop down with their parents to the courts. For those who have played before we review the current ranking as provided by ERT and the reviews playing technique. Parents get a chance to meet with other parents to discuss rostering and car pooling if required.

Junior players are considerably more robust that us parents give them credit for and while many players have a preference with whom they would like to play with, most children adapt very well to the team they join. It is important as parents and guardians that we encourage our children to have new experiences and meet new members of the club.

Junior Selection Committee

The junior selection committee is generally made up of the Junior Convenor, Assistant Junior Convenor and the coaches.

The Junior Convenor role is split into two parts to reduce the load on any given parent. We have one parent who does the Saturday morning duties of opening the club and organising play on the day. The other parent (normally the assistant convenor) is doing much of the paperwork, particularly at team selection time.

If you are passionate about your child’s tennis or would simply like to help out, please enquire about the convenor roles or assisting on the selection committee by sending an email to president@hprtc.org.au.