OCTOBER 2019

TV 1860 Aschaffenburg Tennis

Flachstr. 38, 63739 Aschaffenburg, Germany

Club Website
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Publisher's Notes - FEATURE 1 Rod Heckelman - FEATURE 2 Delaine Mast - FEATURE 3 Rich Neher WO19 - LETTERS Facility Award - Organization Award - Male Pro Award - Female Pro Award - Pickleball - Suzanna McGee Fitness Gary Horvath League Participation - Marsha Friedman - Ed Shanaphy - Gary Horvath Player Development

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ABOUT TV 1860 ASCHAFFENBURG TENNIS

TV 1860 Aschaffenburg Tennis is the tennis department of the largest sports club in Aschaffenburg, Germany. The club is located in the northwestern tip of Bavaria, which reaches almost up to the Frankfurt area. It features 10 outdoor courts, 8 of which are clay courts, plus 3 indoor carpet courts.

Besides tennis, the club offers aerobics, archery, boxing, Capoeira, soccer, gymnastics, karate, child gymnastics, track and field, running, trampolin, volleyball, Qi Gong, and yoga.

TVA Tennis Board of Directors

We were communicating with Ralf Stantejsky, responsible for Social Media and indoor court bookings. He also answered questions referring to Club Manager Christian Dietershagen.

TVA 1860 Aschaffenburg Tennis is also the venue for the international Brass Tennis Cup, a supra-regional tennis tournament sanctioned by DTB, the German governing body of tennis.

QUESTIONS FOR RALPH STANTEJSKI

TCB: What is your tennis background? How old were you when you started playing tennis and who got you into it?
RS: At the age of 6 I first started playing tennis at a club. Before that, my brother, my sister and I played tennis against the garage door with sawn off wooden clubs (Dunlop Maxplay). We were introduced to the sport by my father and including my mother the whole family played tennis for years at SV Rhodia Freiburg.

Currently I'm part of the men's 50s team at TV 1860 Aschaffenburg. The highest ranking of my tennis career was the "Bayernliga" with the men 40 from TVA.

TCB: Does Christian have a tennis background? If yes, same questions for him as a bove.
RS: He started playing tennis at the age of 29. Previously, his main sport was field hockey from age 5 to 29 but due to time constraints through job & family, field hockey didn't fit into his schedule anymore. The company he worked for at that time had an own small tennis club with 4 clay courts which made it easy for him to try it with work mates.

TCB: Are you certified for teaching tennis?
RS: I don't have a coaching license, but at the age of 16 I gave tennis lessons for a while. At the moment, I'm a sparring partner for our young top talents and can be requested for training matches if necessary.

TVA kids and coaches at the HEAD-sponsored camp on the Italian island of Albarella, just south of Venice

TCB: We understand you have 8 outdoor clay courts and 3 indoor carpet courts. Are there plans for expansion to more courts?
RS: Yes, we plan to build a totally new club area with 9 regular 2 midcourt courts, all based on clay. Additionally, we are planning 2 extra indoor carpet courts in order to match the growing demand of our young talents.

TCB: How do you promote the club and attract new members?
RS: Excellent promotion of young players with intensive support for all our youngsters. This already got about nationally because of the enormous supra-regional success in competitions and we get requests from players who want to sign with our club.
Once a year we organize the Brass Tennis Cup in order to make the club known nationally for top-level tennis and to invest the earned money in promoting players no matter their intentions (hobby or tournament) as well as young top-players.
Club members have priority for booking the indoor courts in winter and pay less than non-members. Plus, as already mentioned, we are planning to build a new club area.

TCB: Your website states you have more than 30 tournament teams. Are these all adult teams?
RS: In total we have 38 teams. There are 16 teams in the adult department and 22 teams in the youth department. This season the the TVA had youth teams in all 10 age groups and has won a total of 11 championship titles, including 6 in the "Bezirksliga"(highest league).

TCB: What are the goals for each team? Reaching the Bundesliga one day?
RS: The goal is to be supra-regionally successful in the adult/seniors department with players from the Aschaffenburg area. We aim to be at least in the "Landesliga" with our top men's and women's team. We hope to at least reach "Bezirksliga" with our second teams. In 2019 our women's team already played in "Bayernliga", the men's team has just reached that league this year.

For the men's 30 team we try to reach "Bundesliga" again by 2020, which we already did in 2018.
Our senior's department tries to cover all age groups. We aspire to be one of the leading Bavarian tennis clubs in the youth departments and #1 in lower Franconia in addition to being represented in every top league.

TCB: Is there recreational play, too? Can members just come in and play tennis for fun outside of the teams?
RS: Yes, that's possible. With our coach Ljubisa Batev we developed the concept "Fast Learning" which make an easy entry to the sport possible and supports fast learning results for hobby players.

TCB: What are your challenges as a club? How do you overcome those?
RS: The challenges of the future are keeping old members and recruiting new ones.

What we do in order to do so:

• Close interlocking of the individual teams, especially youth / men / men 30
• Promotion of competitive tennis with regional players and high commitment to the club
• Investments in strong players are only made if they agree to be sparring partners for young talents
• Organization and financing of team events such as the northern-bavarian championship
• Sponsoring of team clothing

We need top trainers, who also define themselves with the success of our players. We don't aim for short-time results (e.g. reaching a higher league with the support of legionnairs). Our long-time goal is to give young players the chance to compete as high as possible with our active teams (minimum goal is "Landesliga")

The maintenance of our courts and the club house is the foundation for high-quality sports. This applies to our outdoor, as well as to our indoor parc (The club's "Cash-Cow").

We have a support scheme/pyramid for our high-performance players and the team practices of our men's and women's teams in summer and winter.

TCB: Have you heard of Pickleball? Is it being offered at TVA? Are there plans to offer it?
RS: Yes, we've heard of it, but we won't offer it at our club. Instead we thought about introducing paddle as a sport with the construction of the new club area.

TCB: What is your tennis racquet of choice?
RS: Christian and I both use the Babolat Pure Drive

TCB: Thank you, Ralph Stantejsky.