'As a female head coach and mum of two, I hope I can be a role model'

Continuing our series on national associations who have been commended by the ITF under the Advantage All initiative for their efforts to make tennis truly gender-balanced, Chris Bowers looks at the ‘She Rallies’ scheme run by the Lawn Tennis Association of Great Britain.

Christina San seems fated to have been involved in tennis. Arriving in Britain from China as a two-year-old, her family settled in that part of south-west London from which the Wimbledon ballkids are chosen, and without knowing even the rules of tennis, she became a Wimbledon ballgirl in her early teens.

Yet there was nothing inevitable about Christina staying in tennis – and that’s why the role the LTA’s ‘She Rallies’ initiative has played in making her a Level 2 coach, working part-time alongside her day job in technology in financial services, is so significant in encouraging people like her to stay in the sport. Instead of just playing occasionally or even being lost to tennis, Christina is now part of the British tennis workforce.

“I was asked by my daughter to run a tennis-themed birthday party,” she says. “I said yes without really knowing what I was going to do, so I set about doing some informal research. It happened to coincide with a taster course for women to consider becoming a Level 1 coach, I took the course, got the qualification, and now I coach all sorts of players.”

“Girls drop out of tennis at a faster rate than boys... there are various reasons for this, but one of them is that a disproportionately high percentage of coaches are male"

Christina, who’s currently working towards her Level 2 qualification, doesn’t just work with girls, but the motivation behind the LTA recruiting more female coaches is to attract and maintain girls in tennis. “Our insight tells us that girls drop out of tennis at a faster rate than boys,” says Merlin van Braam, the LTA’s head of coach development and support. “There are various reasons for this, but one of them is that a disproportionately high percentage of coaches are male.

“So as part of the She Rallies initiative, we introduced the taster courses to attract female coaches, mainly by countering the misconception that you have to be a high-level player to be a viable coach. There are lots of tennis fans whose playing level is perfect to help others get better at a grass roots level, and as we have difficulty attracting and retaining female coaches, we needed to address one of the big perceived turn-offs. We run the taster courses as a three-hour webinar showing how few barriers there are to women getting their Level 1 qualification, and how much fun it can be to get involved.”

Two hours west of London, Elly Shearman is another coach who is part of She Rallies, and has benefited from support made available through it. Elly was already teaching tennis, but is now on the LTA’s Senior Performance Coach qualification programme, and plays the role of county coach. She was mentored by the LTA’s female performance coach engagement programme, which sits under the umbrella of the She Rallies strategy.

Elly also runs girls-only sessions in her home city of Bristol, as the greater competitiveness of some boys is thought to be a reason for turning girls off tennis. And she also secured funding through the LTA for a post-natal mothers-and-toddlers session, designed to get new mothers into tennis to promote fitness and sociability.

“I joined the mentoring programme during Covid,” Elly says, “and I found the opportunity to focus on my personal and coaching development very motivating. Without LTA mentoring support I wouldn’t have had the confidence to enrol on the Level 4 programme. I enjoy my on-court coaching more than ever, and as a female head coach and an active mum of two children, I hope I can be a role model to future generations of players and coaches, to help them enjoy tennis and view coaching as a fun and rewarding career.”

“Just one female coach can be a potent symbol that this is a sport for all participants, regardless of gender. Even the most modest initiatives can have important results"

As well as getting more women into active roles and increasing participation of women and girls, the LTA is also working on the visibility of women’s tennis. As part of this, it is looking to make the internet a more gender-balanced place for tennis information. A report for the LTA in 2022 showed a heavy male bias in the results of generic search queries about tennis players, so the association has committed to ensuring its own website and social media have a gender balance, and it is supporting a global campaign ‘Correct the internet’, which highlights inaccuracies in search engines that direct users to unrepresentative male-dominated lists or factual information.

As a national association supported by a Grand Slam tournament, the LTA is one of the more affluent governing bodies, but Merlin van Braam feels this should not prevent associations with fewer resources adopting many of its initiatives. “Simply encouraging more women to take an interest in becoming a coach is a very powerful way of encouraging women and girls to play and stay,” he says.

“Just one female coach can be a potent symbol that this is a sport for all participants, regardless of gender. Even the most modest initiatives can have important results.”