WARRINGTON is getting active and bucking the trend of falling sports participation according to new figures, and tennis is quickly becoming one of the town’s favourite sports.

Nationally, the number of people playing sport has fallen since October 2012 and the post-Olympics buzz, but in Warrington there has been and eight per cent rise in the last year.

And tennis is no exception, with the numbers of people making a racket at Birchwood Leisure Centre skyrocketing.

Indoor court usage numbers have shot up to around 6000 players compared to 3000 at the same time last year – while outdoor court usage is up 45 per cent.

Meanwhile, daily summer camps have regularly seen over 40 children attending.

The hike in numbers comes after initiatives like pop-up tennis, street games and the Road to Rio.

John Whitehall, who has been a tennis coach for 17 years, has been speaking about the reasons behind the increase.

He said: “We’ve been out to engage with parts of the population that you might not easily get involved with tennis – from that we actually see that growth is unbelievable.

“Pop up tennis and street games have gone to the level where we’ve actually formed a team that has gone on to play at Roehampton and then gone on to Wimbledon – they’ve had incredible success by using this pop up activity.

“It’s just an incredible way of engaging with the local population and giving them an opportunity to come and play tennis and be involved.

“A lot of it is the simple stuff done repetitively well and the infrastructure being in place to make sure that when you do the simple stuff well you then follow it up.”

John, 35, has been a coach at LiveWire for three years and in that time there have been numerous Warrington tennis success stories.

In addition to players taking to the court at Wimbledon and the Lawn Tennis Association’s luxurious base of Roehampton, some have even competed in Europe.

John added: “Luckily we’ve had some success with some of our older players.

“We took a group to a Tennis Europe event in Portugal recently and the profile on the back of that gives people the aspiration to go ‘look, in Birchwood there’s two of these kids who’ve gone off and played internationally – I’d like to have a go at that’.

“Then when they come in there’s opportunities that are really affordable for them and people can come and play and get involved with tennis.”

Culcheth resident John also highlighted the ease of playing tennis compared to other sports.

He said: “It only takes two people, so if you want to and have a game of five-aside you’re going to need ten people, but to play tennis its two people - you might even play against the wall by yourself.

“All kids are different and different kids will enjoy different aspects of different sports – I think tennis is one where you don’t feel like you’ve got the worry of somebody charging at you like in rugby, but nevertheless when they get pretty good it’s going pretty quick so they’ve got to be pretty sharp and pretty on the ball.

“Different sports float your boat in different ways and tennis might be appealing if they want to just have something that when they start isn’t so contact based.”

British tennis is enjoying something of a boom, largely thanks to the success of one Scot, and in the aftermath of Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win there wasn’t a court to be had at Birchwood.

John added: “We had people playing over the path outside, using that as a little net while they were waiting to use a court.

“Every court indoors and outdoor was completely crammed and people were waiting for two hours ahead.”