Tina Bianchi and Sandy Lutersz share why they have embraced pickleball as their favourite sport, explain how you can play pickleball with little prior experience, seeing smiles on young and old alike from the moment they pick up a pickleball paddle, their own personal successes on the pickleball court, and following their dreams of setting up their own pickleball centre.

Kate Robinson shares with us her favourite tennis fashions of the recent past, Serena Williams iconic outfits, and casts her discerning eye over the hits and misses in the players’s kits at the 2025 Australian Open.

Soupy JOY presenter delights us with a variety of racquet and tennis themed sports that you never knew existed. Anyone for racquetlon?

Host Demetra Giannakopoulos speaks with writer and director Annette Baumeister, about her documentary Playing to Survive: Hitler vs von Cramm. The true story of Baron Gottfried von Cramm, a German tennis champion of the 1930s and 1940s. Annette’s film provides a detailed and entertaining account including archive footage, animation and interviews with current tennis legends, of how von Cramm refused to join the Nazis, was imprisoned for being gay and was both rejected by the tennis establishments of Wimbledon and the US Open, and equally supported by his rivals on the tennis tour.

Rowen D’Souza is the President of the GLTA, and a global LGBT sanctioning body for tennis tournaments for the LGBT community. The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) recently reviewed its policy about trans inclusion in British tennis. Rowen and host Demetra reflect of what are the wider implications for this decision, how does it compare to Tennis Australia’s policy and what other options are possible beyond the binary structure of sport.

Lowana Williams joins host Demetra Giannakopoulos to discuss whether women should play 5-set matches in Grand Slams. This question is often raised to be critical of equal pay between men and women at Grand Slams where women play best of 3-sets and men play best of 5-sets. You will be surprised what wider issues of discrimination this simple question actually reflects about women’s sports.

Host Demetra Giannakopoulos speaks with TJ, the President of Hobart Hotties, and Brendon Oliver-Ewen, about creating a safe and welcoming space for LGBTIQ tennis players in Tasmania, Australia. They talk about how both experienced and beginner tennis players show the love of the game and TJ and Bredon tell us what they learn from playing tennis that helps them deal with life.

Soupy, JOY presenter, challenges Demetra on her tennis trivia knowledge.

Dr Catriona Nguyen-Robertson from Science Queeries explains the science of tennis racquets, ball flight and how this knowledge will improve your tennis.
 

Dr Sally Ride was the first American woman astronaut. But did you know that her initial career path was to be a professional tennis player? Dr Cartriona Nguyen-Robertson from JOY show Science Queeries tells us about this remarkable woman and her legacy. And yep, she was a science “queerie” too.

Demetra speaks with Caroline Maes, a journalist, and tennis fan about meeting the French LGBT community, her involvement with the 2018 Paris Gay Games, and why Rafael Nadal is her favourite player.

Host Demetra Giannakopoulos interviews Rowen D’Souza, CEO and President of GLTA, which is the international LGBTIQA+ tennis organisation.  Rowen is also the Founder of the Glam Slam, a tennis tournament celebrating the LGBTIQ community at the Australian Open. Rowen explains why the GLTA is important for queer participation in tennis and how it continues to make it inclusive for women and all genders in our community.
TRANSCRIPT
Uptempo dance song under a voiceover: Anyone for tennis? You’re with Demetra Giannakopoulos on Hit Me Up on JOY 94.9.
Host Demetra Giannakopoulos (DG): Our special guest today is Rowen D’Souza, who is the CEO and president of the GLTA, which is a worldwide LGBTIQA+ tennis organization. And Rowen is also the founder of the Glam Slam, which is played at the Australian Open each year. Rowen, welcome to Hit Me Up.
Guest Rowen D’Souza (RD): Oh, it’s great to be here. Thank you for hitting me up.
DG: (laughter) Any time. Now Rowen tell us about the GLTA. What do they do? Who are they?
RD: So the GLTA is a worldwide organization made up of nearly 100 LGBTQIA+ run tennis clubs around the world. And our function and our rationale is to organize events for LGBTIQA+ community around the world to play tennis. So it’s a very simple thing that brings people together using the glue of tennis, but creates social networks and people get to make friends, and people get to experience the joy of a sport in an environment that is tailored to our community.
So the rainbow community plays sport just like everyone else, and it’s really nice that we give them that opportunity to do so. Whether it be in countries where it’s very much legal and very much accepted, or even countries where it’s maybe a little bit hidden still, or it’s new or it’s different. The GLTA aims to bring people together through tennis.
DG: Tennis or sport is a competitive endeavor and I like to compete, but also the thing I love and I’m, I’m, I’m talking about tennis because that’s my sport. But I’m sure it’s the same for every other sport that the community of the sport whether you’re in a club or you turn up in a tournament.
How does that fit in with the GLTA? And is that something that is part and parcel of the GLTA, or do you have to, you know, constantly have a conversation about that with people who turn up for the tournament?
RD: The clubs actually form the voting members of the GLTA. So there are like a there are foundation and what it what was there were actually clubs, LGBTI people playing tennis and they organize themselves into clubs and then they’ve organized themselves further. The beautiful thing about GLTA events is no matter where you go in the world with one of the events that we sanction, there’s going to be a level of consistency.
We have a, we have a ranking system. We have a set of rules and bylaws. We have a set of norms that we have. So, you know, Iif you travel to America, if you travel to Japan, having a new tournament in Japan in March, if you travel to Majorca, if you travel to Oslo, if you travel to these places, you as an LGBTI person, if you are by yourself, you can actually know you’re going to find community because you have that foundation of the tournament.
So the tennis is the thing that grounds us and the clubs have started, you know, organizing these amazing events around the world. And then other, you know, smaller groups organize that as well. But I think it’s something that it’s it’s about connecting us all up. It’s creating a network that we can find a safe space wherever we go.
DG: How does it work? Is it like search a website to find like when tournaments are on?
RD: So I website, the GLTA.net has a list of all our tournaments,

Conrad, Gina and Alaisdair of Out Takes, Joy Radio’s own LGBTIQA+ film and tv review show, share their favourite tennis films.

Joel King-Mayne is a familiar voice of JOY Radio including QNN, Gossip Gays, Saturday Weekend Breakfast, and Joy Weekly. Joel also loves to play tennis, and shares with us his tennis journey, triumphs, and how tennis can can teach us life lessons.

Host Demetra Giannakopoulos speaks with Karolina Czyż from Poland who is on a mission to encourage Polish lesbians to play more tennis and enter tournaments in Poland and through Europe and how through tennis you can meet the love of your life.
Gaybledon Championship Tour
“morewomen@GLTAtournaments”
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Host: Demetra Giannakopoulos (DG):   We have a very special guest on Hit Me Up! We have an international guest and her name is Karolina Czyż and Karolina is from Poland. Absolutely loves her tennis. Karolina welcome to Hit me Up on Joy 94.9.
Guest:   Karolina Czyż (KC): Hello. Hello, everybody. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, my name is Karolina Czyż and I live in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. I was born here in 1977. I was attending, tennis academy, as a kid being eight and 13 years old, and then stopped playing and returned to tennis in 2021. So having 44 years.
So I had, around 30 years of break, and I was studying psychology. But I work, for a corporation in financial reporting.
DG:   Why we’re talking to you is because you are really getting involved in encouraging people to take part in the GLTA tour. So, what tournaments have you played in the GLTA tour?
KC:   I played already, ten GLTA tournaments. My first one, was in Poland in June 2023. It was in Poznan Summer vibes. That’s the name of the tournament. AND last one, was in August this year in Zurich in Switzerland. And on my first, tournament in Poznan, I played together with guys because there were not enough woman to create a separate woman draws.
And I came there with my rainbow tennis friends from my hometown Warsaw. And she took her wife and a dog, and I took my girlfriend, and we all came very curious to check how is it to play on the biggest rainbow tour in the world with all these guys from abroad? Is it all worth so much money to pay?
And turns out the atmosphere was great. Guys were very welcoming. It was super funny. And finally, I could feel it’s my kind of space where I can fully relax and meet others from my favourite rainbow and tennis bubbles. And it was really worth every dollar spent there. I admit, that before, I never paid so much for any tennis tournament.
As usually I played only on our tournaments in my hometown, which, costs, like, 1 or 2 [word]. So that was, something a big leap for me. It was really great.
DG:   Tell us which tournaments you’ve play because you’ve played quite a lot of tournaments.
KC:   Yeah. So all of them were, were in Europe because of the costs. And I’ve chosen the ones, where I could play in separate woman draws. Okay. Because we have tournaments, like, almost every weekend, I think. But, not all of them offer separate draws for woman. Last year, in 2023, when I started with GLTA, there were three tournaments, two of them in Poland, because I decided I would play in every tournament in Poland.
That was Poznan Summer Vibes and in Katowice.
DG:   That’s a great name for a tournament, summer vibes. So in Australia we’re just coming into summer and we’re starting to feel the summer vibes.
KC:   Yeah. And I can tell you that guys, created even a song. Summer Vibes. So we, had, our own, anthem for, for this particular tournament because of artificial intelligence. Now you can just ask it to create a song, you know, from over give, tennis, LGBT, summer vibes and so on. So we had this song playing all the time during the tournament.
It was really nice. Guys are very creative.
 
DG:   Oh, that is fantastic, I love it.
 
KC:   And, first tournament, last,

Joel King-Mayne shares the goss about who are the loved-up couples of tennis.

Host Demetra Giannakopoulos talks with Luke from Checkpoint about tennis video games, the difference with e-sports and remembering Wii Tennis.

Host Demetra Giannakopoulos talks with Ian Pearson-Brown founder of Pride In Tennis, an organisation dedicated to LGBTQ+ inclusion in British Tennis. Ian who is a tennis coach and played tennis from when he was a child, speaks about starting the inclusion road via football (soccer) and how he has come full circle from joining in homophobic chants as a younger man, to standing on a tennis court with top ten players and talking to packed crowds about the importance of inclusion of LGBTQ+ community in tennis.
Socials: @prideintennis
FULL TRANSCRIPT
General: (Over fast paced dance music with a strong beat) Anyone for tennis? You’re listening to Hit Me Up with Demetra Giannakopoulos on Joy 94.9.
Host Demetra Giannakopoulos (DG): Our guest today is Ian Pearson-Brown, who is the founder and currently the Clubs and Venues Network officer for Pride in Tennis, which promotes LGBTQ plus participation in British tennis and is the 2024 winner of the LTA President’s Award for Outstanding Achievement and Innovation in Diversity and Inclusion. Ian, welcome to Hit Me Up.
IPB: Good morning.
DG: Now you’re good morning because you’re calling from London. Is that correct?
IPB: Close enough. I’m from Newcastle which is in the north of the UK. So yes, I’m aware it’s evening for you at the moment over there isn’t it?
DG: It is indeed. Please tell us about Pride in Tennis.
IPB: So, I’ve worked, in tennis as a tennis coach for, my most of my adult life. I was, a very sport smart kid. Loves my football with my tennis, and I was I realized when I was 13 that I was gay. I had huge issues with that. I found it very difficult to get into my head that I didn’t believe you could play sport and be gay, for a multitude of reasons. Partly the lack of role models, partly the internal barriers inside my head because I felt I had to choose between the two.
I developed a lot of mental health problems, including, depression, anxiety. It led on to some attempts to take my own life, and it also linked to the fact that I couldn’t accept that I was gay because I was heavily into sport. So if I had to choose between the two, I chose sport. I threw myself into a career as a tennis coach.
I was, 30 when I finally came out in the sports space. When I did come out, all of the things that I thought might go wrong, I thought parents might take the kids away from my coaching sessions. I thought my teammates might stop talking to me. None of those things happened of course. And then I realized that tennis is not a homophobic sport.
However, we never seem to talk about this subject. We never seem to talk about the lack of representation in, tennis, but particularly in men’s tennis, for LGBTQ plus people. I wanted to do something, as a volunteer to be able to change the narrative, namely to make sure that no young LGBT person would go through the experiences that I went through as a young queer athlete.
So I approached the LTA about ten years ago, and I’m going to be kind to them and say they were not ready for the conversation (laughter). So I did a bit of voluntary work in football instead, in soccer. I’m a dedicated Newcastle United fan and helped to found the LGBT fans group United with Pride. And I became a United as One ambassador for the club, and still work as a diversity and inclusion consultant for the club, which of course, is a major Premier League club.
And I learned a lot about, LGBTQ plus inclusion in sport. And I took that experience back to tennis at a time more recently, when the LTA were ready for that conversation, and we launched together Pride in Tennis out of the LTA National Tennis Centre in February 2022. I’ve been doing a lot of prep work for it. From there it just exploded.