What a tennis year it was for Porsche Talent Team players in 2021: Nastasja Schunk reached the Wimbledon juniors final to celebrate her biggest success of her still young career. Teammate Jule Niemeier did likewise when making it to her first ever semifinals of a WTA tournament at the Hamburg Open. As a reward for their consistently impressive performances was their Porsche Team Germany call-up in November. They both appeared in a doubles rubber at the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup in Prague.
In 2012, Porsche transferred its successful motorsport juniors’ program to tennis to support up-and-coming youngsters in the Porsche Talent Team. In close collaboration with the Deutsche Tennis Bund (DTB – German Tennis Association), the primary intention of the support is to make the set-up for talented juniors more professional by enhancing individual coaching and guidance both when practicing and at tournaments. Currently the development programme includes a total of seven hopeful youngsters: alongside Nastasja Schunk (year of birth: 2003) and Jule Niemeier (1999) there is also Noma Noha Akugue (2003), Mara Guth (2003), Eva Lys (2002), Julia Middendorf (2003) and Alexandra Vecic (2002). By giving them professional on and off-court assistance, Porsche wants to give the players a jump-start for the difficult move up to the pro tour. By performing at a consistently high level, they can recommend themselves for greater things – like Nastasja Schunk and Jule Niemeier. Eva Lys also came to the fore in 2021 when winning the national German championships.
Highly important
“For us, it is highly important to not only support Porsche Team Germany in the Billie Jean King Cup,” says Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG. “We simultaneously also want to help promising juniors develop and accompany young players on their way to the top. The Porsche Talent Team and the Porsche Junior Team is therefore a project that is very dear to our hearts.”
“Porsche’s support gives us the chance of developing the talented youngsters even more intensively,” says Barbara Rittner, who, as DTB’s Head of Women’s Tennis, is responsible for the junior girls and the U-23 women and is in charge of the distribution and deployment of the funding. “We now assist the selected players far more intensively than before. For example, we gather them together more often for training camps and our coaches accompany them more regularly to international tournaments. Porsche creates the important conditions for this individual-based work.”
