ALEX Bogdanovic and Jamie Baker took time out from their preparations for this weekend’s Davis Cup tie in Bolton to inspire budding tennis stars at one of the area’s most progressive sports colleges.

The AEGON GB teammates saw first-hand how tennis is developing at St Joseph’s RC High School and Sports College in Horwich, which is one of more than 9,000 schools around the country to have received support from the AEGON Schools Tennis Programme which provides training, resources and free equipment to schools nationwide.

The programme has donated more than 250,000 free rackets to schools and trained more than 10,000 teachers since it began two years ago.

Anthony Turner, partnership development manager at St Joseph’s said: “Tennis is an integral part of schools with us delivering mini tennis in the primary schools and now getting the sport into the secondary schools.

We have a vibrant mini tennis league and the sports college has really helped develop school-club links by providing access to the facilities to the primary schools.

“To have Alex (Bogdanovic) and Jamie (Baker) visit and take part in our tennis session has been inspirational for the pupils.

It’s great to see high quality tennis players mixing with the pupils here and we’re delighted to have them here.

We wish them the best of luck this weekend.”

Head of PE, Sue Walsh said: “Since becoming a sports college, tennis has improved steadily every year. It’s very important to us, so much so that we’re the only school in Bolton with a tennis club in the local league, so not only do we play school matches, but we also play club matches.

“In addition we also have 80 pupils registered to play in our club on Saturday mornings, so it’s a growing sport and the pupils are really enjoying it.”

Bogdanovic, best known of the British squad which takes on Tunisia in the Europe/Africa Zone Group II tie which takes place at the Bolton Arena from Friday to Sunday, said: “In order to encourage more kids to take up the sport and stay involved we want to make tennis more accessible at school and we want them to have a quality first experience and today’s session was exactly that.”

For updates, visit www.lta.org.uk/daviscup