Beaver River Tennis Club

Dear BRTC Members, As I write this (early April), substantial snow is in the forecast for later this week. Nevertheless, we hope for more consistently warmer weather soon, and hope to have the nets up by early May. By then the playing surface should also have dried out.

Your Executive has already met several times to prepare for the coming tennis season. We reviewed our 2023 on-court season, our socials, our relationship with OTA (our biggest annual costs are OTA Insurance and OTA Dues) and our financials.

We feel our membership dues costs are about right, so we will not be raising them this season. Membership was down slightly from 2022. We ended up with 35 family or single memberships, which translated to 55 adults and 12 juniors.

Overall our costs were up substantially in 2023……….food, booze, even tennis balls. Our new bright red courtside canopy metal roof (even with almost free labour), still came in at $2,100. We are not contemplating any capital projects in 2024.

The above shows us the importance of membership retention (keeping everyone engaged & happy) and membership recruitment ($300 initiation fees sure add up).

On that note, the Ski Club is making its’ 36+ new (23/24) membership families aware of what BRTC has to offer this summer. We are also aware of a number of BV chalet and Lake Eugenia cottage ownership changes………certainly a recruiting opportunity for us.

Eddie and I met with the BVSC people last month and some positive long range ideas were discussed, some of which may even happen this year………..stay tuned.

Two other clubs were formed last summer : a mountain bike club and a road bike club. We are looking into possible synergies with them also.

Reflecting on last year, I’d say we had a pretty active Club. Most planned and scheduled activities were well attended and a big ‘Thank You’ goes out to all who stepped up and volunteered to make things happen. Let me also publicly thank Suzanne (Communications & Website), Eddie (V-P & Round Robins) and Darlene (Treasurer & Property) for the many hours they put into this great little Club of ours.

Respectfully Submitted,

Knute Dohnberg, President, BRTC