Queanbeyan Park Tennis Club and Pat Moloney have taken out top honours at the Australian Tennis Awards held at Crown Palladium on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Queanbeyan Park Tennis Club became the first Tennis ACT affiliated club to win the Most Outstanding Club award.\u00a0 As well as the honour of being named Australia\u2019s top club, they received a $25,000 prize to help continue the development of the club courtesy of Tennis Australia.<\/p>\n
It has been an exciting 12 months for the club which has seen major improvements to the facility resulting in increased participation, members, and facility occupancy.<\/p>\n
Community has been at the core for the club, running free Cardio Tennis sessions for Mums Exercise Group Australia (MEGA), Solider On and supporting local indigenous participation in the NSW Knockabout Health Competition.\u00a0\u00a0 They have also facilitated court usage for disability support groups including the Disability Trust and Valmar.<\/p>\n
The club has developed a strong relationship with their local coaching business, Parkside Tennis Academy, which has successfully run a number of events including Tennis Festival and their inaugural Glow In The Dark night where the lights were switched off and the courts lit up with specialised ultra-violet black lights.<\/p>\n
The club has also completed recent upgrades to improve wheelchair access and build a children\u2019s play area.<\/p>\n
Club President Kathy Sly, was excited on hearing that the club received the accolade.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very proud of our achievements and it\u2019s quite humbling to be among the tennis elite in Australia and to receive this recognition.\u00a0 We are just a small club with a lot of very committed volunteers and coaching team.<\/p>\n
Secretary, Kris Mitchell says passionate people within the clubs environment has been key to their success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe club, since we got our new coach has really gone ahead in leaps and bounds because of their enthusiasm and the committees drive to work with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are just a bunch of people who love of tennis and love having a bit of fun while we do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pat Moloney was also recognised for his huge contributions to the sport when he was awarded the Most Outstanding 35+ Tennis Senior.\u00a0 Moloney has been a long time member, player, administrator and mentor with Tennis Seniors for decades.<\/p>\n
Moloney has made a huge contribution to Tennis Seniors both locally and nationally.\u00a0 He was the President of Tennis Seniors ACT for eight years, held the position of Vice President, and has been the Secretary of Tennis Seniors Australia since 2012.\u00a0 He is also the Tournament Director of the ACT Open Seniors Tournament and an ACT selector.<\/p>\n
Moloney has represented the ACT at the Australian Teams Carnival 33 times, the most of any male player.\u00a0 He also represented Australia earlier this year at the Super Seniors World Championships in Umag, Croatia.<\/p>\n
For Moloney, the sport has been a life-long passion of his.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 75-years old, started tennis when I was 18 and I\u2019ve been playing ever since, going up out of junior ranks into the adults, not in a top line, and then going playing Seniors tennis all the time, got involved in administration.\u00a0 I love the game and [I\u2019m] still going.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe comradery amongst the players is tremendous and as you get older, they\u2019re around all the time as well. You\u2019ve basically got lifetime friends and people you meet overseas and in Australia.\u00a0 It\u2019s a real sport for life,\u201d Moloney added.<\/p>\n
Ashleigh Barty took out the night\u2019s top award, winning her third consecutive Newcombe Medal, after a breakthrough season claiming her first Grand Slam title and ending the year at world No.1.\u00a0 For a full list of all award winners, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Queanbeyan Park Tennis Club and Pat Moloney have taken out top honours at the Australian Tennis Awards held at Crown Palladium on Monday night. Queanbeyan Park Tennis Club became the first Tennis ACT affiliated club to win the Most Outstanding Club award.\u00a0 As well as the honour of being named Australia\u2019s top club, they received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5789,"featured_media":15688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15684","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\/15684","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=15684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}