An organiser of junior padel events in London has admitted “extreme frustration” at the slow development of programmes and competitions for young padel players in the UK.
Elvira Campione has organised two junior coaching and matchplay sessions so far this year in London for Under-18s at the Hurlingham Club in Fulham and Rocks Lane in Chiswick.
Twenty-two juniors (some of them making a five-hour round trip) attended the session at Rocks Lane on 4 February which featured coaching from GB stars Jorge Martinez and Rafa Vega.
Campione plans to hold further sessions every month at Rocks Lane, where owner Chris Warren provides the courts and coaches at a discounted price. For the next session in March, Campione intends to split the juniors into U12 and U16 age groups and form an A and B team to identify future members of a potential GB junior team.
But Campione, a GB padel international, revealed “there is a lot of frustration” among young players and their parents that there aren’t yet more opportunities for junior development and competition around the UK.
“There are only a few tournaments being offered by the LTA around the country and entries are often limited, which is what I’m trying to resolve,” Campione told The Padel Paper.
“These children are desperate for opportunities and they aren’t going to be children for much longer. With every year that passes they are going to outgrow an age bracket and they might miss out.
“For me, there’s massive frustration at the time it is taking for the LTA to get things going. Time isn’t an option for these kids. They are all playing and having coaching, but what are they getting good for? There isn’t anything for them to strive for.
“I understand that growth has to be cohesive across the country and it can’t be down to individuals like me plugging away in one corner of London, but I’m impatient for these children to get the level of support they deserve.”
Campione’s junior padel sessions are a great first step – and despite admitting that she is “desperate to run before I can walk,” the impact of the first two junior sessions was hugely positive.
“The only padel experience some of these young players currently get is playing with adults. It can’t be much fun playing with three adults all the time as a teenager,” she said.
“There are lots of juniors but they don’t know each other as there are very few tournaments. It’s fun for them to play and connect with other youngsters and they were able to find out how good they were relative to other children’s standards.
“I wanted children to meet each other and potentially create partnerships which would allow them to feel confident enough to enter competitions.”
(Main pic: Youngsters Sholto and Benedict, who had never previously met but formed a pair at Rocks Lane, pictured with coaches Rafa Vega and Jorge Martinez)
