Dear members,
A week ago today, Templeogue Tennis Club launched its 24 hour charity tennis marathon for 2019. It turned out to be quite a day (and night!).
I’m delighted to say that approximately 160 players took part during the 24 hours. Well done to everyone who participated on court, particularly those in the very early slots. Also, a special thanks for our exhibition stars James Cluskey, Colin O’Brien, Justin Smyth and Mick Lynch who started us off on Friday evening and later joined by Bill Cass and TTC 's junior Alex Vrel Nagel.
As play progressed on court, we had plenty of entertainment in the bar to keep the crowd happy. It was wonderful to listen to Uisneach (Breifne Holohan and Trudy Maguire) play live through the evening. Breifne actually double-jobbed on the night and joined me afterwards for a truly dreadful 90 minutes on court with Conor O’Hara and Paddy McLoughlin at 2am! Back in the bar, we also had a mini-joker - overseen by the Bennetts - with half the proceeds going to charity. Miriam O’Connor Meade also gave us some nice L’Oreal products to raffle. There was a great cheer on the night as Paul Curley revealed the joker. We were delighted to see our juniors getting involved on Saturday afternoon and a well done to our coaching assistants for running the fun tennis from 1pm to 4pm.
If there’s one thing for sure, nobody left the marathon hungry. The social committee deeply appreciate all the donations of food given over the two days. On Saturday afternoon, the function room was a sumptuous bakery overseen by the fantastic Mary Cody and Barbara Dunne. We also had a lovely barbecue on both nights thanks to the tireless team of Mary Keogh, Catherine Reilly and Chris Harrington. Meat was kindly provided to us by Porky’s butchers.
Of course, all of this effort was done to raise funds for three important charities. At this point, we have raised €2,635.08 for Peter McVerry Trust, Barretstown and Crumlin CMRF. You are all fantastic for getting us to this total so well done!
If there are any members or companies who’d still like to contribute to get us to the €3,000 mark, the online donation page will be up until the end of September.
Finally, I’d like to pay special thanks to Paul and Linda Bennett for all they did, Pamela, Paula and our excellent social committee (Barbara Dunne, Mary Keogh, Amy Bennett, Catherine Reilly, Mary Cody, Chris Harrington, Chris Clarke and I suppose myself).
It takes a lot of work to organise events like these but it’s well worth it when we can help such great causes. I think we saw Templeogue Tennis Club at its best that weekend and we should be very proud.
Well done to all,
Stephen Higgins (TTC Social Committee)