International Women's Day 2025 - Celebrating female tennis coaches and activators

Manjinder Rooprai - Let's Go Southall

Manjinder Rooprai is an LTA Activator at Let’s Go Southall who has helped spread her love of tennis within her local community to get more females playing on the West London Park tennis courts.

When she became involved, Let's Go Southall - a community organisation dedicated to encouraging greater community activity - was already out there in the community, offering free events and motivating people to work out.

When approached about the potential to add tennis to what they were doing, Manjinder jumped at the opportunity to become a tennis activator and lead on the newly renovated courts.

Since adding tennis to their offering, Let’s Go Southall have seen huge demand for the sport. This has seen growth in their sessions across local parks, ensuring as many individuals can access the sport as possible.

Manjinder said: “What I love about being an activator is that it brings people together. It’s a new game for Southall, especially for the females. We really enjoy the competitive games, and they come back week after week to play and join us. We’re really proud to meet female activators, because primarily Southall sees tennis as a male-dominanted game, but we’ve got lots of females that have joined us. We enjoy it, and they enjoy it too.”

When asked what she would say to any women who would like to become activators, Manjinder said, “Let’s do this. Let’s get on and let’s show the world that we as females can take on a game of tennis.

She added: “I think women are a little bit wary when its all-male dominated courts. To see female activators on court, I think it is really important to draw in more women, and this is something we have done in Southall.”

Rushan Tonge-Bobia - SheCanServe

Rushan Tonge-Bobia is one of the founders of SheCanServe, connecting women through the power of tennis.

Asked about what she loved about being a female coach, Rushan said “The most rewarding part is being able to see everyone smiling, everyone happy. We always say it’s more than just tennis, to see everyone come together, meet new people and just have fun. I think that I would say that that is rewarding for me.”

“I feel like if you see someone that is a female and looks like you, you’re going to be more inspired and encouraged to get involved. I think it’s really important that you have the representation in the sport to encourage people that may feel shy, that may not feel comfortable and confident to step into the sport.”

SheCanServe is a women’s-only community founded by Rushan, Angela Zamara and Memuna Koroma, who are three girls who grew up playing tennis together, and now put on tennis sessions for women in their community to help them get involved in the sport through fun and cultural tennis events.

Rushan, Angela and Memuna, bonded over their shared love of tennis. After a brief break from the sport, they returned to their childhood courts, capturing the attention of TikTok audiences with their spontaneous and light-hearted sessions. These casual meetups soon evolved into a welcoming community of both new and returning female tennis players.

Rushan said: “When we were growing up, we didn’t see many black people at tennis tournaments, and we didn’t see people that looked like us, but being able to come in and make our mark and show that you don’t have to be a professional to be involved in tennis is something that is really motivating us and inspiring us to do more at SheCanServe events.”

She added: “We hope we can inspire more women to get into coaching, to get into volunteering. We have some younger girls that also help us volunteer, and the hope is to eventually to help them to do their LTA level 1, level 2 (coaching qualifications) and get them more and more into tennis.”

Leah Wakeham - LTA Community Coach

Leah Wakeham is an LTA Level 3 accredited coach with over two decades of experience and passion. Leah takes great happiness in guiding players through learning the fundamental skills and unlocking the competitive potential of skilled players. Motivating the next generation, from their first hit to competitions, is a fulfilling aspect of her coaching philosophy.

“As a female coach I like to present as a positive role model”, said Leah. “If girls can see you in that role, then they can actually believe that they can do it as well. I think that’s really important to be a positive role model and bring lots of fun and energy to the table as well, especially when you’re coaching girls, when a lot of it is going to be about friendship and making good connections with people and building confidence. I like to bring the fun element to coaching and keep it quite light-hearted.”

“What I would say to any females looking to going into coaching is to absolutely go for it. It’s something that you can fit around your family life, you can take it on as a full-time career or work it around whatever hours suit you. Overall, coaching is such a rewarding thing to do. It’s given me a huge amount of confidence and opened up so many opportunities for me...It presents some fantastic opportunities to meet people and create a career in coaching. There’s so much support out there from the whole coaching community in terms of courses and learning that you can get involved with. You’re constantly developing your skills.”

At the LTA we continue to want to see as many women and girls as possible playing tennis and have a number of initiatives to get even more women and girls into the sport, underpinned by our She Rallies ambition for tennis to lead the way towards becoming a truly gender balanced sport.

Jo-Anne Downing, LTA Programme Strategy Manager said: “We really want to see more women joining the coaching and activator workforce and this is a key element of our work. Since 2022 the number of female coaches has grown by 33% which is fantastic to see but, it remains the case that less than a quarter of accredited coaches are female, so there is still a way to go.

"We have been challenging ourselves to look deeper to thoroughly understand the issues and what’s needed to encourage more women to join up. Hearing these inspirational stories just goes to show how rewarding and inspiring these roles can be.”