Recap · 20 March 2026
Inside a NETworks afternoon in Marrickville: corporate team building through tennis
A look inside a NETworks tennis and networking afternoon in Marrickville, and why coached tennis makes such a natural corporate team building and team culture experience in Sydney.
A NETworks afternoon in Marrickville starts the way the best team days usually do, with people a little unsure of what to expect and leaving with a shared story to tell. The format is simple on paper, coached tennis followed by relaxed networking and hospitality, but the reason it works for corporate team building runs deeper than the tennis itself.
Coached tennis for every skill level
The afternoon is built around coaching, not competition. Whether someone has played for years or has never picked up a racquet, the drills are set up so everyone can take part and improve within the first few minutes. That matters for a team event, because the moment the pressure to be good at tennis disappears, people relax and start talking to each other properly.
Coaches move groups through rallies, short games and simple challenges, keeping the pace friendly and the groups mixed. The point is participation, so the quiet achiever and the self-declared beginner end up on the same court working towards the same thing.
Zero-ego, inclusive play
NETworks runs on a zero-ego idea of play. Nobody is keeping a league table and nobody is there to win. That inclusive approach is what makes it such a good fit for team building in Sydney, because it levels the room. Seniority and job titles matter far less on court than a willingness to have a go, and that shift tends to carry back into the way people work together afterwards.
Networking and hospitality, not a hard sell
Once the tennis winds down, the afternoon moves into networking and hospitality. This is the part people often remember most. Conversations that started as encouragement across the net continue over food and drinks, and because everyone has already shared the slightly awkward, slightly fun experience of learning together, the networking feels natural rather than forced.
There is no scripted pitch and no name-badge small talk for its own sake. The tennis does the introductions, and the hospitality gives people the time and space to turn those introductions into real business connections.
How it builds team culture
Good team culture is built on shared experience, and a tennis team event gives people exactly that. Teammates see each other try something new, cheer each other on and laugh at the misses together. Those small moments of trust are hard to manufacture in a meeting room, and they are the ones that make a team feel like a team.
For a company, that is the real return on a corporate team building afternoon. People leave knowing each other a little better, having talked to colleagues they rarely cross paths with, and with a shared reference point they keep coming back to long after the event.
From the afternoon in Marrickville
The Marrickville afternoon captured all of this, coached tennis for all skill levels, inclusive and relaxed play, and networking that flowed naturally into the hospitality that followed. The photos and highlights video below give a feel for the energy of the day.
If this sounds like the kind of day your team would enjoy, that is exactly what NETworks is built for. We run private corporate team building events for companies in any industry, using the same coached tennis, networking and hospitality to build team culture and business connection.
