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Helping Gigi to become a tennis champion

Gigi Hays

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When I started my tennis journey I had no idea I would get this far, I played for fun once a week with several other kids in a group lesson. Now I train hard every single day, the fitness is tough, sometimes it makes me cry, but I know I have to do it and it won’t stop me. The most important thing is I still play for fun, because tennis is the best thing in the world for me and I quite simply love it. There is nothing else I would rather be doing than hitting the ball!
My passion and hard work, the dedication and help from everyone involved with my tennis has paid off and I have quickly got to be one of the top juniors for my age in France, but it doesn’t stop here. I don’t want to be just World Number 1, I want to be the best the world has ever seen. However, as you can probably guess the training fees are huge and so are the travel costs. But I am not eligible for any form of aid as I am not French, my family and I are legal residents but not citizens. I am the youngest of five children and my parents are struggling to keep me playing tennis along with schooling fees and things for the others. Which is why I am hoping that anyone who reads this might be able to help me and if we all join together, with your assistance WE can get to World Number One.
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You might be wondering why we are asking for help with Gigi’s tennis, and to be blunt, it is because tennis is amongst the most of expensive sports (and careers) to pursue. To get to where Gigi is today requires not just talent, dedication and passion, but also an extraordinary amount of money.

Some of the young players in the world are fortunate to have families that can support them on their journey, but others rely on sponsorship and donations – and for the top juniors in France this means annual sponsorship from the French Tennis Federation. Unfortunately, Gigi is not a French citizen, though she will be in the future if her plans go accordingly. She is also not an English player either, which means she is not yet on the LTA radar. And as the youngest child of five, it means money is tight on all fronts for her parents.

As a result we have been relying on donations and sponsorship for the past two years from friends and family, and some extremely generous businesses here in France. However, it is not nearly enough, and we are now hoping, and believing, that with the help of more support, we can maintain the level of finance needed to keep Gigi on her course to the top.

Of all the numbers we have computed, there is a simple one – if we can find just 250 people who could sponsor her for €10 a month, or €120 a year, we can raise the €30,000 that Gigi currently needs for her annual training and tournament costs. Couple such a sum with what we already receive from sponsors and family, and we hope Gigi will then also be able to compete on the Junior European Tour on a more regular basis. European tournaments are often a long way from France, in Iceland, Morocco, Turkey, Estonia, and Sweden, just for some examples.

We sincerely hope you find Gigi’s prospects to be as exciting for you as they are for us. We believe we have to find a way to keep her training, and to develop the natural talent she appears to have in abundance. We know that this website is an unusual way of finding help, but we are reaching out to you all as individuals who would like to share Gigi’s adventure, as people who just want to see someone succeed in what is a very long, daunting climb to the top of one sport’s summit. She has gained 16,000 followers on Instagram, who make up a lot of her support basis.

If she succeeds, she will never forget you, and neither will we. We would like to think that Gigi is rapidly becoming the People’s Player, and we ho

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