It’s been a challenging year for everybody involved in sport due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s been tough for the University of East London’s Tennis Team who haven’t had any competitive matches for over a year now.
Due to the UK coming in and out of lockdown, training has not been consistent and players have had to spend months away from the court.
Rising East spoke to Richard Buscombe, a senior lecturer at the university and who is in charge of the UEL tennis teams, he said, “we’ve had a year where we’ve been a bit on and off in terms of what we are allowed to do with the athletes and what you can and can’t do with tennis.”
At every opportunity, they have had “we’ve tried to get athletes on the court and we have done that but that’s not been possible for a large portion of the year.”
Tennis are one of the fortunate ones though, compared to the likes of the basketball and volleyball teams, as tennis can be an outdoor sport, “we’ve benefitted a bit in comparison to them” he explains.
Covid Challenges
One of the big issues the team have faced away from no matches and training is that a lot of the team’s players are international students including students from Greece, Spain, France and Belgium. This has led to challenges regarding quarantining and individual’s travel arrangements. Some players have missed training sessions due to them arriving in the UK and having to isolate while others haven’t been in London for over a year now.
Buscombe explains, “for one athlete in particular, who’s on a sport science course, he said to me, ‘do I need to be in the UK? I’m not allowed to play tennis and all my course is online’. At that point, we supported students who wanted to go back to their countries if that’s where they felt safe. That was the right and proper thing to do.”
Under the current rules the team can train outdoors, however, “some players aren’t in the country and aren’t training with us but morally it’s the right thing to do (letting them stay at home). We can’t tell people to stay here, away from their families in a pandemic, in the hope they can play tennis.”
Life After The Pandemic
Buscombe says that BUCS matches should return soon, “Everything is getting geared up for the next academic year if the government allow us to”. The team do have four
players that have qualified for the BUCS Individual Event set to take place in June but a resumption of the league will hopefully be in September.
When things do return to normal, the team will be looking to pick up from where they left off, UEL now has their men’s and women’s first teams both into the National Division, the highest league of university tennis.
“We’ve got a really good girls team, I’m confident they can do a little bit more than just stay up (next season). For the boys, it will be harder because we will lose our number one and number two seeded players as they’re both graduating” he says.
Recruiting Talent
As the first teams move up into the National Division, the top players at that standard normally have world rankings. Bringing in good players to replace them will be yet another big challenge the UEL side faces, “It’s difficult at the moment to recruit because the UK has left the EU and there is still a pandemic going on so people are reluctant to commit their future.”
Buscombe confirms that he is working on signing some new players but admits, “it’s not easy to find someone who has got some money, wants to come to the UK and wants to play in your tennis team. Those people don’t grow on trees” he exclaims.
The depth of talent UEL have is very impressive. Both men’s and women’s second teams got promoted into Division One which is “as high as most first teams are” Buscombe says happily. He remains confident both of those teams can stay up despite them playing some first teams of other universities.
With all four of the tennis teams enjoying successful campaigns before the pandemic, everyone involved with UEL sports are hoping to pick up where they left off when competitive tennis hopefully restarts next academic year.
