The LTA will hold its first ever GB junior padel development camp in December at We Are Padel Derby, marking the start of its pathway for young players.
The governing body has invited clubs to send their aspirational juniors to a two-day camp on 16-17 December, where the LTA’s coaching team will take the first steps towards building a GB junior team to compete on the international stage.
The Padel Paper has heard parents and coaches express their frustration at the lack of opportunities and infrastructure for their eager and talented juniors to develop in the game and experience a good level of competition. This training camp marks the initial stages of the LTA’s response to those concerns as it builds a pathway to enable juniors to reach their potential.
The camp has been split into two separate training days, with players aged 14 and under attending on the Saturday, and players aged 15 and over on the Sunday. Both days will consist of on-court and off-court activity led by LTA accredited coaches. The players’ level will be assessed and a group of players selected to attend further training camps in 2024.
LTA’s Padel Performance Manager, Matt Stanforth, told The Padel Paper: “We’re fully aware that we need to show junior players who are taking up the sport that there are opportunities within padel if they want to start taking it more seriously. The camp will be a chance for us to start getting to know those players and set out a way forward.
“It will give us the basis to develop the structure over the coming years. Ideally I want to get a point where we’ve got key training groups over all those different stages of development at Under-12, U14, U16 and U18.”
Stanforth, who was appointed to his role in January after many years working in high-performance table tennis, understands the frustrations about lack of opportunities for juniors up to this point. He says this mainly come down to padel’s embryonic stage of development.
“In my sort of role, normally you’d inherit a pathway with a clear structure which you might develop further or unpick in some ways,” he says. “But in padel we are obviously starting everything from scratch. For me, that was actually part of the appeal of this role.
“Just for a coaching camp we have to have lots of things in place – we have to ensure venues are registered, insured and have proper safeguarding regulations. There’s lots to set up behind the scenes, but we absolutely recognise that young people are the performance players of the future and we’re looking forward to rolling out a structure to support them from here onwards.”
There are international junior tournaments next year that the new GB team could compete in – but Stanforth says they will only enter if the coaching team feels the players are ready.
“If we feel there are benefits in sending juniors to major championships, we will absolutely support that,” he said. “I’m building relationships with other national federations which will hopefully lead to exposing our players to different environments, players and friendly competitions.
“Once we get high volumes of matches and training in, if we’re ready to go to a major championship next year, we’ll go – but we’re not going to to go for the sake of going. It needs to be done at the right time where we can learn from that experience.”
December’s camp will also provide a chance for club coaches to take part in formal coach development. Stanforth added: “Developing the coaching workforce is so important and we can deliver some training alongside the work with the juniors.”
