Dear North American Racquets Association Members,
I hope everyone had an enjoyable summer with friends and family. We are eagerly anticipating a more normalized Racquets season for 2021/2 and are happy to share with you the tournament schedule which can also be found on the NARA Website. As we have all become accustomed throughout the pandemic, we will need to remain flexible and adapt to changes in state and federal regulations if needed. We will notify our membership as early as possible if we need to adjust any of the scheduled tournaments.
Our first event of the season occurred earlier this month in Philadelphia for the annual gathering of our North American based racquets professionals. This event is an opportunity at the start of the season for our professionals to spend a day and night sharing best practices and skills on and off the court. The goal is for our Pros to return to their respective clubs with enhanced teaching skills for our membership to benefit from. It was a tremendous success and we encourage you to connect with your professionals and learn some of the latest tips. At this time we would also like to welcome George Sawrey-Cookson who has joined the Tennis & Racquet Club of Boston as Head Racquets Professional.
Next month, The Queen’s Club in London will host an eliminator match (Billings/Owen Vs M. Bailey/James) over two legs to determine who will be the challenging pair in the World Doubles Championship which is to be held in London and New York this November. The Championship match was postponed from last year and everyone is hoping the match can be played. The 2nd leg of the World Doubles is scheduled to coincide with the Silver Racquet in New York on November 13th. Again, a complete list of tournament dates and venues can be found on our website’s Fixture Page. In addition in October, you will shortly be seeing information on our annual Under 35 Tournament which is to be held in Chicago on October 20th-30th.
The NARA board remains extremely grateful to all of our members who continue to support the game and we are pleased to provide details on where subscriptions are targeted. Last year with your assistance, we were able to provide our Racquets Professionals with a Covid Relief Fund, recognizing the significant disruption to their programs and how critical all our Professionals are to the success of our game. On an ongoing basis, NARA contributes to the tournament prize money, professionals training weekend, advance the play checks for every club, subsidized balls, travel subsidies, U35 tournament, dinner for Kendrick Cup participants, in addition to our communications and administrative requirements. This list is not exhaustive but hopefully illustrates the very important areas that we as a board target. With that in mind if you would like to “upgrade” your membership from Patron ($75) to Benefactor ($250) please notify your NARA Club representative. As a token of appreciation, we will be giving all existing and any incoming Benefactors a NARA branded sport duffel. Please inform your club rep by 10/30/21 if you would like to upgrade to Benefactor.
In addition we are excited to be offering a small selection of NARA attire to our membership. These are available for purchase on the NARA website and orders should be made by 10/30/21, we hope to have all orders shipped by 11/30/21. We hope that you will consider purchasing some clothing.
We very much look forward to seeing everyone at a tournament soon and please reach to myself or your club representatives with any questions.
Play!
Jonathan Larken- President, North American Racquets Association (New York)
Lucas Walsh (Vice President, Boston) Baker Thompson (Treasurer, Chicago) Norb Madison (Detroit) Guy Devereux (Tuxedo) Mike Mclernon (Montreal) Jeff Yager (Philadelphia) Conor Medlow (Chicago)
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