Every year, KCL Tennis hosts a tournament with the aim of raising money for a chosen charitable organisation. This year, we chose to raise money for Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY). As a university sports team, we felt this was a good cause to focus on. We hoped that through fundraising for CRY, we would also be able to raise awareness about this important charity, as well as encouraging our members to think about the importance of looking after their cardiac health, particularly in the context of high-intensity sport performance.
Due to ongoing lockdown restrictions, we were unable to host an in-person tennis tournament – this was disappointing as it’s usually one of the highlights of our calendar. Instead, our committee decided on a different way to raise money – we opened up a competition where entrants could send in a video of themselves hitting a tennis ball in the most creative way possible. The most creative entries were to receive a prize, and every entry was included in a video compilation.
We were delighted with the response from our club, with a wide array of creative tennis shots featuring in the resulting video. The two top winners were Hassan from our GKT Team, with a very intimidating boxing punch of the tennis ball (perhaps he should consider also joining KCL Boxing), and Amanda’s (one of our Women’s Team Captains) Mum, with a backhand ladle swat to protect her soup broth from the tennis ball. These were worthy winners indeed.
The process of fundraising was enjoyable – we were lucky to have so many people happy to be involved, and we were proud to raise over £300 for CRY. I hope that via our fundraising, we were able to raise the profile of CRY in our club, and I’m grateful to the charity for the work that they do – especially for young athletes.
