THE legacy of Elena Baltacha will be continued in Scotland as tennis coaches are to work with her academy to set up a programme in Glasgow.
Nino Severino, husband of the former world top 50 player, has confirmed the Elena Baltacha Academy, which is based in Ipswich, will work with coaches in Glasgow to make tennis accessible to children in the city.
Baltacha, who died last year aged 30 from liver cancer, was brought up in Scotland and was passionate about her foundation that has proved an enormous success south of the Border.
Now coaches at Western Tennis Club in Hyndland are set to work in partnership with the Baltacha Academy to bring her message to Scotland.
The academy in Ipswich offers pastoral care, medical screenings, sports science support, strength and conditioning, injury prevention programmes. It has a parent and player educational system which includes player emotional support, psychology, nutrition and tennis lifestyle programmes.
Mr Severino said of his wife: "She loved Scotland. One of the things that breaks my heart is that we were going to spend so much more time in Scotland. That is why I really want to make this effort to set up the scheme in Scotland. I know how much she will be smiling right now."
Julie Gordon, a coach at Western Tennis Club, believes the initiative can be a success in Scotland and draw children from all backgrounds to tennis. She visited the academy in Ipswich recently and was inspired by the values it espoused.
She is also helping to organise a Rally for Bally event at the club next Saturday when children will be given free coaching and celebrities such as Greg Hemphill, Alan Rough, Sanjeev Kohli, Kaye Adams, Judith Ralston, Alison Walker and Ian McCall will play in a tournament.
A similar event last year earned £10,000 and the money raised on Saturday will go to the Elena Baltacha Tennis Foundation, Playlist for Life and the Scottish Dementia Clinical Research Network.
The event starts at 2.30pm with tickets costing £10 for adults and a £5 for children.
All details about the event including how to buy tickets can be found at: http://www.glasgowwestern.co.uk/events.html
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article