22 year old Georgia Routledge has been playing tennis since the age of 6. Georgia has Cerebral Palsy (right side-hemiplegia) but has always played tennis in mainstream groups. She has worked with her coach Donna Andrews for 13 years and until recently has been playing once a week. Georgia is also a part time tennis coach and is just waiting for her exam results from her Level 2 instructor course.
Last year, Donna saw an advert from the LTA about a Para-standing tennis festival. Para-standing tennis has had a massive rise in popularity in the UK over the last year, particularly from it’s biggest and most well known supporter – comedian Adam Hills. Para Standing Tennis has been created allowing amputees or people with other physical disabilities, people with Cerebral Palsy and people of short stature to have an equal playing field and be able to play competitively against people with a similar disability but without having to use a wheelchair.
After discovering this new classification, Georgia is now training 5 times a week, as well as being in the gym 5 times a week and this year she attended the European Championships in Barcelona, and the World Championships in Turin. Georgia explains that until this category existed she didn’t feel like high level competition would be for her as it wasn’t an even playing field.
The Dan Maskell Tennis Trust supported Georgia with funding for a new tennis racket as well as funding for individual coaching sessions. Incredibly, Georgia had never had individual coaching until she decided to start competing at International Para-standing events! With these coaching sessions under her belt and her hard work and determination, Georgia has come away from the summer as the women’s World Champion in the PST3 classification.
We are so proud to have supported Georgia to achieve this remarkable accolade and can’t wait to follow her career in future. The Dan Maskell Tennis Trust is also excited to be involved in this new format of tennis – opening tennis up to even more players with a disability. We are not only providing funding to individual players but also partnering with the LTA to run Para-standing tennis coaching camps. We can’t wait to see where this new category can take players like Georgia.
If you want to learn more about Para-standing tennis you can follow this link and to learn more about the funding the Dan Maskell Tennis Trust provides, click here.
