Josh Hodgins is one of 120 thriving young padel players at SmashPadel Bicester, which has fast established itself as a template of ‘best practice’ for elite junior development.
Fourteen-year-old Josh is at SmashPadel Bicester at least five times a week. The club is within cycling distance of his house, but such is the nurturing environment created by the club’s coaches, that other children travel from as far as Leicestershire, Guildford and Cheltenham.
The five-court venue is next to the M40 in the grounds of Bicester Hotel Golf & Spa. Your editor (pictured above, centre) was lucky enough to be invited to meet the coaches, parents and children and observe coaching sessions on a sunny evening in early July. What I witnessed was quite jaw-dropping. It’s surely the most sophisticated and successful junior coaching programmes yet seen in the UK.
The club has a structured junior pathway, beginning with ‘Little Smashers’ for ages four to six, right up to its Junior Performance squad, which includes Josh and others who compete at national and European level.
The level of detail that the coaching team, led by Miguel Caramalho, puts into every young player is astounding. Each is given an Individual Development Plan which uses child, parent and coach feedback, and data from video footage of coaching sessions and matches, to accurately rate the player’s mental, physical, tactical and technical progress. Coaching is then shaped around the areas highlighted as most in need of attention.
But running through SmashPadel’s entire philosophy is one simple metric for success: are they having fun? The answer to that was very evident during my visit.
“Josh has had the most incredible experience here,” said his mum Vicky. “He lives and breathes padel. Some weeks we’re here every day, but we don’t mind. We love it too!
“It’s taken over our lives, but in a good way! Josh and his brother have an absolute blast here. They’re fit physically and mentally, they’re having so much fun and they’ve made loads of friends. They’re so lucky to be part of this. Josh even chose Spanish as his GCSE option because he wants to play and coach in Madrid!
“All the coaches are eager to learn and improve and they want the children to reach whatever level they want to achieve. Nobody is pushing them, but the kids are all so driven because they’re having so much fun. We’ve never, ever had to get Josh out of bed in the morning to come here. He’s always up and ready to go.”
Josh regularly takes the train to Bristol to meet up with Aidan Hawkey, his competitive partner in domestic and European junior competitions, who makes a similar journey from Cornwall. Josh has lofty ambitions: “I just want to go as far as I can in the sport. I’d love to play in Premier Padel one day!” he says.
SmashPadel have even invited Josh to help coach some of the ‘Little Smashers’ sessions; a role he has revelled in. “It’s improved my confidence so much and how I talk to people, both younger children and adults,” he says. “My game has improved so much because I’m learning from the best coaches around.”
One of those coaches, Academy Manager Gordon Dunn, is the brains behind the statistical and video analysis that underpins a lot of the coaching content and feeds into the players’ Individual Development Plans.
Gordon is a musician and former guitarist with the Royal Shakespare Company. His 17-year-old daughter is a dog behaviour specialist who has won three YKC obedience titles at Crufts. It’s perhaps little surprise in such a high-achieving family that his 14-year-old son Andrew (pictured below) recently became the first British-based junior to win a FIP Promises title and entered the top 40 in the FIP junior world padel rankings.
Coach Manager Miguel has organised several junior academy trips abroad to broaden the children’s padel experience, including a week-long stay at the Conpas Padel Academy in Madrid and group trips to FIP Promises tournaments in Belgium and Holland. SmashPadel academy players are travelling to Spain, Belgium and Germany for further competitions in the next few weeks.
Academy player Harry Allen said: “I learned from going to Holland how high the standards are, the control, the retrievals from the corners and smashing out of court. After the trip, I made a list of things I wanted to achieve and the Smash coaches are helping me work on them.”
Harry’s mum Hannah said: “There’s a really good dynamic between all the coaches. They look at each child individually in terms of how they learn. It’s not a one size fits all approach.
“The kids feel like part of a proper team. At tournaments, they don’t disappear off and go on their phones, they cheer each other on. The community is so close. My kids are obsessed!”
SmashPadel’s coaching team of Miguel, Gordon, Annabelle Denly, Lupe Arribas Blanco, Gary Taverner-Smith, Ben Cox and Josh Ousley all have similar Individual Development Plans to the juniors. They undergo regular CPD and even visit foreign padel coaches and coaches from other sports when opportunities are identified for them to expand their skillsets.
There’s regular knowledge sharing between coaches across SmashPadel’s sites in Bicester, Oxford, Whitstable and Haywards Heath. They have new venues opening in Cardiff and Taunton, a further two by the end of the year and aim to open four per year from 2026 onwards.
So if you’re an aspiring padel player, or you have a son or daughter keen to progress in the game, there may soon be a welcoming community of happy, motivated young players to join near you.
