The Tennis Australia initiative is continuing to develop and support women in community leadership positions, as well as build the pipeline of our next generation of leaders.
Queensland, Australia, 20 August 2024 | Nadia Dimattina
Rebecca Warner has been the Vice President of the University of Queensland (UQ) tennis club for six years.
As an avid tennis player herself, starting out in the UK during the 80s with plastic bats and foam balls, tennis has always held a special place in Warner’s heart.
She’s now focused on a new project – to increase female participation at her club – by introducing women’s social tennis sessions.
“We have historically low female representation across our programs, and I really wanted to look at an initiative that could actually improve those numbers and so I came up with the idea of ladies social tennis to run once a month on a Sunday morning,” Warner explained.
“We call it ‘match and mix’ because we provide refreshments afterwards and invite people to actually stay after tennis, to be able to socialize, to network, to meet other people.”
And the results are in – the club has seen a spike in the number of women playing tennis. Warner was hoping for 15 women to attend the first session when it kicked off in June and was amazed to see more than 40 turn up. The latest session had more than 50 women participate.
“I didn’t know there was this many women playing tennis in Brisbane. It has been fantastic – they just kept coming. It demonstrated to me that we were doing something right,” she said.
The idea was sparked from her ‘Key Action Learning Project’, an activity that forms part of Tennis Australia’s Women Leaders in Tennis program.
Rebecca was one of 17 women from across Queensland who graduated last weekend from the program, which is being rolled out nationally.
The Women Leaders in Tennis program aims to increase the participation of women in community leadership positions through professional development, mentorship and networking opportunities.
For Wulli Wulli woman Sharaina Lister, tennis is more personal.
“When I’m on a tennis court, it feels like home,” she said.
As president of a rural tennis club in Rolleston, Lister hopes to pass on her learnings to others in the community.
“For me, doing this role, it was a thing of, ‘okay if I can do it, then I can help other younger generations, not only just First Nations but our whole…
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