The coaching staff and the participants with the President of the SLTA Iqbal Bin Issack, its Secretary Pradeep Goonasekera, Chairman of Coaching and Promotion Rukmal Cooray, National Sports Council (NSC) Secretary Thiyumi Abeysinghe, Sri Lanka tennis legend Arjun Fernando, and some of the members of the NSC at the launching of the High-Performance Training Programme at SLTA, Colombo on Friday (2)[/caption]
The first-ever High-Performance Training Programme or a quintessential Sri Lanka national tennis squad has now been formed. A long-due initiative, made by the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Sports, was launched on Friday (2) at the SLTA headquarters in Colombo.
According to the new project, spearheaded by Bharatiraj Pillai, 21 players have already been picked in girls and boys Under-16 and 18 age groups as well as men’s and women’s segments, in order to give them free coaching while offering them much-needed overseas exposure.
The programme, which is to be headed by former Davis Cup player and current Coach Renouk Wijemanne, will be assisted by Sylvester Francis and Ashan Dep as coaches, and the renowned fitness instructor Bilal Yusuf as its Strength and Conditioning Coach.