WHAT AN INCREDIBLE YEAR, 2025 HERE WE COME!

News and Stories by Nino Severino

What an incredible 2024 it has been for The Elena Baltacha Foundation! It's been, without doubt our biggest and best year ever. As the chairman, leading the incredible board of trustees, it’s been an honour, and I would like to thank them all from the bottom of my heart, Ben Haining Duncan Foster Kari Chaudhry Jonathan Ferrar Praf Vagh Stephen Harding Penelope Moor Graham Dove Stephen Brown. The trustees provide the board with a wealth of experience and a broad base of skills that enables us to make the right decisions for our foundation.

In 2023 we welcomed Penny Moor to the trustee team, she has been a constant by my side, joining me and the team as we deliver tennis to pupils across our networks, both in Ipswich and in London. Penny is a founder member of the WTA, and stood alongside Billie Jean King, and the other female players as they fought for equal rights back in 1972, she is an incredibly strong woman, and a fantastic role model. 2025 will be our biggest year ever, and I will need the support of our board, to continue to steer our foundation through the next year, building on 2024 in a very dynamic way.

We've welcomed our major sponsor Mezzle to the EBF family, this has been extra special as the CEO Mel Kang is one of the World’s biggest tennis fan, full of passion for the game, and totally committed to our charitable objectives. Having Mezzle on board will mean we can have a bigger affect through 2025, expanding both our tennis and SS4B programmes. This relationship with a global company will continue to grow throughout the next year, together we have some very exciting plans.

The highlight of every year is our major involvement in the WTA Morgan Stanley'Come Play' event at the LTA National Tennis Centre. The WTA and Morgan Stanleygenerously supports all our programmes with annual funding. The lead for this event is Judy Murray, accompanied by other WTA ranked tennis players. It was a joy for me to visit our schools in our London and Ipswich network, discussing the event with our teachers, meeting the pupils and dropping off the 'Come Play' T-Shirts that all the girls proudly wore at the event. 

The ‘Come Play’ event is a major commitment for me, I work alongside members of the WTA to ensure we offer opportunities to a large group of girls in our school networks. They all get the chance to meet Judy Murray and the other WTA tennis players. This is a very special event, always filled with great fun, and of course lots of tennis. The saying ‘Life experiences make you who you are’ is so powerful, these experiences for the girls is priceless, and I am sure they will motivate and inspire all of them.

Our large tennis programme represents where it all begun, with Elena and I visiting schools in Ipswich, those schools that were ignored by most of the tennis clubs situated in the area. Elena was the only individual who was driving tennis throughout the schools who were situated in very challenging areas. We were told on many occasions that taking tennis to these schools would not make a difference, but Elena ignored the advice! She expressed her views on many occasions, saying ‘these girls have fight, I can see it in their eyes’, these words motivated me to stay by her side, my word, how right she was. Many of our foundation girls went on to play tennis at the highest junior level, three of them representing Great Britain. Elena’s belief in them was as solid as a rock, she loved them all, and they loved her.

It wasn’t only at the highest level where Elena’s legacy made its mark, so many of our foundation girls went on to join tennis as recreational players, many making the ranks of county teams, and climbing the pathway to regional tennis. In between competing on the WTA world tennis tour, Elena would always make sure she would attend as many tournaments as possible, her loyalty and love for the girls was very special to watch.

The Elena Baltacha Tennis team are driven by Elena’s legacy, we are building a powerful network that ensures that we place as many rackets as we can, in the childrens hands, and simply watch them enjoy our wonderful game. We invest in the fact that this opportunity will inspire and motivate them to join our wonderful game of tennis.

I would like to thank Access Sport, one of our incredible partners, for their support, ensuring that we make connections with the schools in the London areas. Their support has been invaluable, together we have created an ever expanding list of schools that we visit, most of them in very challenging areas of London. The joy, laughter, fun and enjoyment witnessed, is in itself a wonderful reward. In 2025 we will continue to develop our relationship with Access Sport and look to continue to grow our school network.

We delivered our tennis and SS4B Self Development Programmes to thousands of pupils and students, across our London and Ipswich networks, providing fantastic sporting and educational opportunities. We delivered the very popular 'Elena's Olympic Experience', sharing the stories from the 2012 Olympics, and showing the children Elena's Torch and Olympic kit. These events are always special, as they provide me with the opportunity to honour Elena, and of course re-visit memories of our time as part of the Olympic team, as player and coach.

We also delivered our Fitness and wellbeing elements of our programme, encouraging young children to commit to a healthier lifestyle. Our programmes include warm up routines, strength and conditioning exercises, and well-structured cool downs, educating the pupils across many wellbeing elements. Ensuring these young children have these type of fitness and wellbeing experiences is priceless, its different to the schools delivery, and massively compliments the great work the schools deliver, day in, day out. Together, we hope that we can inspire and motivate as many children as possible to commit to fitness and wellbeing.

SS4B has developed to be one of the major jewels in Elena’s legacy crown. This programme focuses on attracting the older student who already has invested in their sports development. We encourage them to focus on the virtues that they are developing through being part of a sport, training, competing and taking on the challenges. We accompany this with an incredible platform that offers them World class learning and development resources. We have presented to thousands of students over the years and provided them all with access to the members area of our platform. We now enter 2025 with bigger aspirations, providing students with outstanding opportunities of real-life work experiences, Mezzle will lead the charge, opening their Ipswich and London offices, providing the students with access to their top professionals. The Mezzle team will mentor these young students, this is an incredible opportunity, Mezzle will be joined by many other companies.

And, as always, we finished the year by inviting all our senior foundation girls to a Christmas event, girls who started their journey with us at the age of 6, and, who are still very much a part of our foundation family, many of them now studying and playing tennis in America. These opportunities have been developed through the tennis opportunities provided by Elena’s foundation, and the incredible support of the players parents who have worked so hard to make this happen. Sarah Borwell from Tennis Smart has been a major influence, ensuring all the foundation girls have received fantastic college scholarships. I promised Elena that I would continue her wishes, to establish and maintain relationships with our players throughout their life paths, I think as a foundation, we are keeping that promise, and ensuring her legacy lives as strong now, as it ever did.

I cannot complete my post without thanking the Short Family for their contribution of hundreds of sports shoes for the children, its incredible to think that in 2024 many children still attend school needing sports shoes. Because of the generosity of Ellis Short V, we can support our schools with an almost limitless supply of shoes. Shoes To Share, Ellis’s foundation provides these shoes across a large range of sizes, this means that not only the children benefit, but also their older siblings.

we look forward to continuing this special relationship in 2025 and helping many more hundreds of children with these urgently needed sports shoes.

I look forward to continuing to honour my darling wife, Elena Baltacha-Severino in 2025, if you feel you would like to join us on this journey, please direct message me. I wish you all an AMAZING 2025.