Smash Tennis Mental Well-being Initiative
We’re delighted to serve off our 3rd Smash Tennis program. Our goal is to increase access to group-physical activity programs for vulnerable members of the community. We use ‘social sport’ to enhance well-being through increasing social connectedness, peer support, and physical activity levels.
The program is designed for individuals aged 16+ to aid in their mental health recovery. Our intention is to break down barriers such as stigma, competitive environments, low self-esteem, and low confidence preventing access directly. Our delivery partners include Sydney Sports Management Group (SSMG), South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, Tennis NSW, and local councils.
We are grateful to Tennis NSW and ATP Cup Legacy Fund for a second round of funding to help us develop and deliver the initiative.
Participants benefit from a weekly two-hour session that includes tennis coaching and integrates the learnings from Collective Leisure’s ‘wheel of well-being’. Following each tennis session, the participants and coaches take time to socialise and connect with each other over healthy snacks and beverages. This social connection is extremely important and invaluable to support the building of positive relationships between the participants and enables improvement of their well-being. After the 12-week initiative, participants are supported to transition into social tennis.
Participants are mainly referred by South Eastern Sydney Local Health District’s Keeping the Body in Mind program (KBIM) of Eastern Suburbs Mental Health Service. The initiative is measured through the industry-leading monitoring and evaluation platform, Views using the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10).
Planning is underway to expand Smash Tennis to Football and Golf in 2023.