Annual Report of the Chair, Board of Governors And the General and Special Committees 2024
Our Adult programs continue to grow. Our tennis opt-in email list has reached an all-time high of 2,104 email addresses, and our pickleball mailing list has more than doubled over the last two years at 1,075 members. The Ladies Interclub program remains healthy with 10 teams playing in the two leagues (Maryland and NOVA) with over 150 ladies participating between our regulars and substitutes. In addition to the 20 large-scale events that we held last year (including Club tournaments, pro-ams, socials, exhibitions), we also hosted 67 ladies interclub team matches, and 96 weekly men’s and ladies’ intraclub league play days offered by the Club. We also added new tournaments this year (including the pickleball mixed member-guest and wooden racquet centennial tournament), as well as a weekly pickleball intraclub league, 10 new weekly pickleball clinics, and six tennis socials/round robins over the year (including the Valentine’s Day mixed social and the “Secret Santa” social). The Juniors program continues to grow at ANCC as we now have over 350 active players ranging from ages 4 to 18—the most ever. Last year we had 44 weeks of Junior Tennis Programming, 16 different junior clinics and practices per week, and 220 total Junior USTA matches. Five 12U, two 14U and two 18U junior USTA teams qualified for Sectionals over the year. ANCC racquet sports teams were extremely successful in competition this past year. For example, ANCC Women’s 3.0 USTA Team (Tamara’s Slice Girls), captained by Tamara Ashford, earned a trip to the Mid-Atlantic Sectional Championship. Team members include Heidi Dilliard, Linda Thierauf, Quinn Byrnes, Jo Maney, Barbara Hancock, Lorna Susi, Eerin Alexander, Colleen Border, Eileen Gilligan, Diana Hung, Kathleen Melanson, Holly Ford, Kimberly Welter, Hope Wolf, Varsha Chandra, Ana Beck, and Maria Browne. But that’s not the only team captained by Tamara Ashford that is going to sectionals—our ANCC Women’s 4.0 USTA team (Tamara’s Sledgehammers) also had a highly successful season. Team members include Karen Christian, Mel Hampton, Lori Wright, Liz Lucchesi, Andrea Schnappauf, Jessica Harris, Jennifer Cirenza, Suzanne Marisa, Eva Domotorffy, Bobbi Shoop, Kristin Reif, Dana Moss, and coach Tamara Ashford. And last and probably least, ANCC Men’s 3.5 USTA Team (they prefer “Team 14” over the actual team’s name), captained by David Cross, earned a trip to sectionals as well. The team members were David Cross, Raighne Delaney, Joe Napolitano, Ben Kringer, Bob Easton, Mark Murphy, Byron Pickard, John Sherner, Oron Strauss, Justin Swick, Erik Wittreich, Jack O’Connell, Jin Kim, William Hancock and Scott Border. Congratulations all! We also recently completed two large capital improvements that are helping to grow the popularity of Racquet Sports. First, we installed the Playsight video system onto the six indoor tennis courts. This system allows us to broadcast and capture video footage of matches, clinics, and lessons, providing the professional staff with powerful teaching tools. The system also permits instant video replay for those questionable line calls, but we hope that is a less-used feature. In addition, during the hardware installation, we also engaged in a deep cleaning of the indoor tennis facility. Second, we made some significant revisions to the Arlington pickleball courts, which included installing an Acrytech CushionX pickleball surface, the official surface used by the PPA (i.e., the professional pickleball tour). We also installed redesigned fencing to accommodate pickleball traffic patterns better and added permanent LED lighting. Third, still in the works are plans to convert the existing 8U courts to a covered and lighted facility (for both shade and noise reduction) that will potentially permit pickleball play when not being used by our juniors. And finally, we have begun investigating the viability of an expanded indoor tennis facility that, in addition to providing more indoor tennis, might also provide additional pickleball, fitness and other recreational opportunities. These projects (and potential projects) are being executed consistent with the initiatives identified in the ANCC Strategic Plan 2030—to add more non-golf and tennis opportunities, more year-round activities, more indoor courts for tennis, and more indoor/outdoor
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