Mike James

Director of Tennis

I learned to play tennis on a court built by my Father in Langata, just outside Nairobi in Kenya, and there began a love affair with the sport that was further ignited on the hard courts of Tucson, Arizona where I played High School and Division 1 College tennis (at The University of Arizona,  studying History and English) and continues today in my role as Director of Tennis for Halton Tennis Centre and founder of it's coaching brand and provider Everyball Tennis.

20 plus years working in British Tennis has seen me work as a County Performance Officer for Bucks and Herts, National Performance Officer for Scotland, travel extensively across Europe and work with a number of top national and internationally ranked junior players, several going on to successful professional careers, either as players or coaches.

I am currently a lead tutor on the LTA's Level 4 Senior Performance Coach Qualification and a Mentor to candidates on the Level 5 Master Performance Coach Award. More local to home in Buckinghamshire I work as consultant to the Bucks LTA Aspirantes Programme, designed to help coaches and clubs develop their programmes and young players.  I'm extremely passionate about the 'coaching of coaches' and have a wonderful opportunity to learn from the exceptional tutors I work with as well as the superb young candidates coming through into the profession.

A fascination with personal change, organisational and cultural development, performance teamwork, and developing the mindset for success has led me to explore the work of the 'performance coach' across other sports and into business and industry as well as partnering in the development of our own in-house 'Eupsychia' programmes at Halton Tennis Centre, now housed under CHILDS.

Through this I have worked with teams from organisations such as Lane 4, The Mediaport, The Youth Sport Trust and the senior leadership team of Aylesbury Grammar School, as well as gain from a number of powerful mentors and coaches.

In 2012 I became an NLP and Sport Psychology practitioner through Louise Deeley of 'Inside Performance' to add to my qualification as a Heart Math Coach through 'Beyond the Barriers' in 2011.

One of my current projects is developing Halton Tennis Centre's arm for learning and development - 'The Chiltern Institute for Learning, Development and Sport' (CHILDS) which houses all our training and development programmes (including Eupsychia) as well as a developing mission to support and grow sport in the Chiltern area.