Community Tennis Suriname (CTS)

Community Tennis Suriname is a grassroots tennis club in Commewijne that teaches local young people to love tennis and gives them something worthwhile to do in their free time. Since 2011 almost 600 children from the neighbourhoods of Mariënburg, Ellen, Sorgvliet, Zoelen and Nieuw Amsterdam have taken tennis lessons and played in CTS and national tournaments. In addition, 1,800 children from 9 primary schools in Commewijne have taken part in CTS’s grassroots introductory school tennis lessons. Fifteen players train almost daily, and ten of them regularly compete in matches and national tournaments.

CTS has been going for eleven years under the leadership of coach and “CTS mother” Salome Veerman. Their clubhouse in Commewijne, built with Klabu, is part of the same story. Largely with their own means, they built a clubhouse beside their court and collected equipment to play with. The club also cooks for the children, so that they have at least one meal a day.

Ambassadors since January 2023

After Dean Gorré, Tosh van Dijk, Jeffrey Vanan, Christio Wijnhard and Byciel Watsaam, the young players of Community Tennis Suriname became Forest93 Ambassadors in January 2023.

The Forest93 programme decided to take the club under its wing after coming across a Facebook post in which CTS players had won trophies at a local tournament, playing with old and borrowed equipment. The Forest93 team felt the gap in equipment between the CTS players and their opponents was too big, and decided to at least donate kit, rackets, balls and training materials. In their words (in the original Dutch):

“Het verschil met hun tegenstanders, qua materialen die zij tot hun beschikking hadden om te kunnen presteren, was, volgens ons, te groot. Wij meenden dat we een kleine bijdrage konden leveren door tenminste tenues, tennisrackets, ballen en trainingsmateriaal te donoren.”

On Saturday 14 January 2023 the Forest93 team joined a CTS tennis lesson in Commewijne, together with ambassadors Tosh van Dijk, who came to motivate the players, and Christio Wijnhard. The children received their new equipment and then showed what they could do in a training session.

Gwendolyn Smith of the Forest93 team said that despite Salome’s admirable commitment, there is more work to do to give these children the same opportunities as their peers at clubs in the city:

“Ondanks Salome’s prijzenswaardige inzet is er meer werk aan de winkel om deze kinderen dezelfde kansen te bieden als hun peers bij clubs als Oase en Dolfijn in de stad.”

The court the children train on is not good enough: apart from the holes in the surface, it is too short to practise rallies from the baseline, and a ball that leaves the court lands in the surrounding swamp and is lost. With the help of the business community, the aim is to build a proper tennis court for CTS, which besides tennis lessons plays an important social role for these young people aged 8 to 15.

Forest93 seeks the connection between sport and nature, because these are two areas in which Suriname has always excelled. By involving athletes in the message of appreciating our nature, that message reaches a broader base.

In March 2023 there was already good news from the Suriname Tennis Federation: CTS players Mireldo King and Jair Akaamba were selected for the Junior Davis Cup in Guatemala, and CTS player Rose Ann Chin A Loi for a tournament in the Dominican Republic.