{"id":21099,"date":"2025-07-25T13:28:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=21099"},"modified":"2025-07-25T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:31:32","slug":"team-wa-ready-to-shine-at-2025-national-indigenous-tennis-carnival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2025\/07\/25\/team-wa-ready-to-shine-at-2025-national-indigenous-tennis-carnival","title":{"rendered":"Team WA Ready to Shine at 2025 National Indigenous Tennis Carnival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>On Thursday night, Tennis West held an information night and team dinner for the National Indigenous Tennis Carnival (NITC) players, their families and staff. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>The NITC is the pinnacle event of the First Nations tennis pathway in Australia, celebrating First Nations culture both on and off the court. The event brings together hundreds of individuals and groups to celebrate youth, music, art, food, and health through tennis, cultural activities, and workshops.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The 2025 edition of the NITC will be held from August 6 to 9, at the Darwin International Tennis Centre. <\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The team joined an information session about NITC and were lucky enough to have guests Jade and Phil Narkle give a presentation on the Reflect &#8211; Reconciliation Action Plan artwork. They were also presented with all their Team WA gear for the carnival including hoodies, towels and socks.<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Tennis West Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lead Sara Mohamed was thrilled to present Tennis West\u2019s team to represent WA at NITC next week.<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThere is a sense of excitement and legacy building as we prepare for the 2025 NITC event, with Team WA a mix of experienced players who attended the very first carnival, to three new players experiencing it for the first time.\u201d<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Our team is comprised of athletes from towns hundreds of kilometres apart. This is a rare chance to bring a together group of individuals to celebrate their culture and heritage through connection, expression and purpose &#8211; with a tennis court as a backdrop.\u201d<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Tennis West will be sending a total of 11 players to compete in various categories.<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Future Stars<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Aidan Lundberg (Boys 18&amp;U reserve)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Forrest Klunder<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Lekira Penny<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Mitchell Dorant (Boys 14&amp;U reserve)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Seth Savarese<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Xavier Anderson<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>\u00a0<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><strong>Showdown<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Alexis Holberton<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Alifaye Gidgup<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Emily-Rose McMahon<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Jackson Phillips<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span>Noah Austen<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>\u00a0<\/span> <span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>These players have come from Tennis West\u2019s squads, school and club and coaching connections, and State Indigenous lead in events.<\/span><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-21103\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"842\" height=\"842\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2.jpg 4000w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2-72x72.jpg 72w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2-260x260.jpg 260w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2-350x350.jpg 350w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/2-175x175.jpg 175w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 842px) 100vw, 842px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-21104\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"844\" height=\"844\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3.jpg 4000w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3-72x72.jpg 72w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3-260x260.jpg 260w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3-350x350.jpg 350w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/3-175x175.jpg 175w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 844px) 100vw, 844px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-standardlandscape wp-image-21105\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/Image-28.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/Image-28.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2025\/07\/Image-28-768x576.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday night, Tennis West held an information night and team dinner for the National Indigenous Tennis Carnival (NITC) players, their families and staff. \u00a0 The NITC is the pinnacle event of the First Nations tennis pathway in Australia, celebrating First Nations culture both on and off the court. The event brings together hundreds of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6414,"featured_media":21100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}