Tennis dispute settled

By DION TEASDALE
AN ONGOING dispute between the Healesville Tennis Club and its former coach appears to have come to an end.
After a bitter sixmonth clash with the club’s committee after it terminated his fiveyear coaching contract, former coach Grant Kendall has signed up as the coach for the Woori Yallock Tennis Club.
“I’ll be offering coaching three nights a week from the beginning of next term,” he said.
Mr Kendall, who was unsuccessful in a bid to topple the committee at their AGM last month, said he was expecting up to 50 of his former coaching pupils from Healesville to follow him to Woori Yallock.
Mr Kendall said he had contacted local schools in Woori Yallock area and would be offering a promotion day for prospective coaching pupils in September.
“I hope to build up a number of junior teams and enter them in competitions next season,” he said.
The clash with the club committee led to mediation from Tennis Victoria and threats of legal action, but Mr Kendall said the move to Woori Yallock would be a fresh start.
“It is going to a friendly environment where we can all focus on coaching and what we do best, which is play tennis,” he said.
“ They are a very nice bunch of people and they haven’t had coaching for a number of years, so it will work out well for all of us,” he said.
Healesville Tennis Club president Alan Honeycombe welcomed the news of Mr Kendall’s coaching appointment in Woori Yallock.
“Woori Yallock is an excellent place for Grant to be. He’ll give students in that area access to coaching and I wish him well,” he said.
Mr Honeycombe said he was not concerned that the club’s coaching pupils might follow Mr Kendall. “People will have a choice. If they want to go to Woori Yallock that’s fine. It just means there are now more opportunities of people in the area,” he said.
“We hope it works out well for Grant. We just wish all of us could have moved on earlier and could have avoided the tension of the past few months.”