Alison Ide, OAM<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Born in Cowra, on 19 November, 1935, Alison Jean Aitken, was the only child of Bruce and Phyliss Aitken. When Alison was six the family moved to North Ryde in Sydney and it was here she learnt tennis.<\/p>\n In 1962, Alison moved to Canberra to join the Public Service as a finance officer in Primary Industry. \u00a0Joining Turner Tennis Club she met and formed a friendship with Arthur Ide; treasurer at Turner and a widower with two teenage children. It was a bond which saw Alison and Arthur marry in 1966 and make a lifelong commitment to each other, their family and to tennis.<\/p>\n Alison established herself as a top flight player in Canberra winning the ACT Open Doubles in 1973 and 1974 and in 1984 at the age of 49 she won the ACT Residents Singles title.<\/p>\n She also threw herself into administration and volunteering \u2013 tournaments, pennants, publicity, committees and organising interstate and overseas tennis trips. Nothing was too much for Alison, along with the personality and drive to get others to work with her. \u00a0Alison was Secretary of the Ladies Auxiliary from 1969 \u2013 1972 and Secretary of the ACT Tennis Association from 1974 \u2013 1980.\u00a0 She was made an honorary Life Member of the ACT Tennis Association in 1981.<\/p>\n In his book on the tennis history of Canberra, Roy Smalley wrote, \u201cshe can rightly be regarded as the architect of the modernising of women\u2019s tennis in the ACT\u201d. \u00a0A full women\u2019s tennis program was developed, and the Ladies Auxiliary elevated from its historical connotation as \u2018tea ladies\u2019 to Branch status, with its President becoming a full Tennis Association Vice \u2013 President, Board member and member of the Grading Committee.<\/p>\n As good friend Anne Haycock wrote of Alison \u201cher CV for Veterans and Seniors Tennis is beyond compare\u201d. Up to 1997 Alison appeared in more Australian Veteran\u2019s Championships \u2013 23 of 24 held \u2013 than any other Australian veteran.\u00a0 She won several Australian Veterans singles and doubles championships and represented Australia at World titles between 1984 and 2006, winning the World 70 Women\u2019s Doubles title in Turkey in 2006 with Victorian Joyce Rogers.<\/p>\n Not content with on-court success Alison, was heavily involved in senior\u2019s organisation. She served two terms as President of Tennis Seniors ACT, and national Treasurer, Secretary and Selector. \u00a0In addition to local awards she received awards as the Australian Tennis Senior of the Year in 1986 and Australian Tennis Administrator in 2000 and was made a Life Member of Tennis Seniors Australia in 2003.<\/p>\n Alison maintained her grassroots passion for tennis remaining an active life member of Turner Tennis Club as well as serving as President of Reid Tennis Club, where she was also a life member.<\/p>\n In 1997 Alison was awarded an OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia) for service to veteran\u2019s tennis as a player, administrator, and selector.<\/p>\n In 2008 the ANU Great Hall was packed for a special tribute dinner organised by Tennis Seniors to honour Alison\u2019s contributions to tennis. \u00a0Alison spent the evening reminiscing about her tennis memories in the ACT and it was a fitting acknowledgement for the women known as the \u201cHeadmistress\u201d \u2013 a born organiser, high achiever and genuine Canberra tennis sporting legend.<\/p>\n Following her passing in 2009, Alison Ide was fittingly inducted into the ACT Sporting Hall of Fame<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Walk of Fame Inductee, 2017 Alison Ide, OAM \u00a0Born in Cowra, on 19 November, 1935, Alison Jean Aitken, was the only child of Bruce and Phyliss Aitken. When Alison was six the family moved to North Ryde in Sydney and it was here she learnt tennis. In 1962, Alison moved to Canberra to join the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":12325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}