Focus on the TC Castelbriantais, tennis and squash club which has recently added padel to his offer. 

Today Frédéric Moreau, the president of the club tells us about the impact of this new practice in his club.

A project supported by the municipality

“When I took over as president of the club eight years ago, I absolutely wanted to develop the club, particularly with new activities. The idea was not to abandon tennis because it remains the most important activity, but we wanted to be a multi-racquet club. At first, I had thought about beach tennis, but when I went on holiday to Spain, I discovered padel. I played it every day! I found this sport great and that’s why I wanted to develop it in Chateaubriant. When I returned, I spoke to my office about it and we presented a padel project that was supported by the municipality. 

We have two outdoor padel courts. The first was created 5 years ago, in 2017, we were among the first at the time. The second court was just delivered in December 2021, it's very recent. Originally, we wanted to do two at once and when I presented the project to the town hall, they agreed but they wanted to do one first, wait to see if it worked, and then do the second. It was largely understandable at the time, there was not much hindsight. Padel was not yet experiencing the current progression.

The two padel courts at the Chateaubriant club

A practice that attracts new members

"This new practice attracts people, that's for sure. There is an obvious craze. If we look at the figures, we are at 25% more membership. And out of our 326 members, there are 80 who devote themselves exclusively to the practice of padel. I think that for padel, the number of members has doubled in two years. Contrary to what one might think, this new practice has brought back a female audience. We have noticed a 60% increase in the number of girls at the club.

It's surprising, but in our country, padel has not come to 'sting' tennis players. Some are starting to take up padel while continuing tennis, but very few have given up the big racket for good. Padel mainly helps to bring back former tennis players who want to take up a racket sport again. On the other hand, as far as squash players are concerned, more of them have taken the plunge.

There are mainly new players, badminton players, footballers who simply want to discover the discipline. Since it is very fun, they have fun very quickly and come to play regularly. Trying padel is almost adopting it. And it is very positive because it allows a renewal of people and there are new faces, it energizes the club.

Developing padel, especially among young people

 "As for tournaments, we organize about 6 per year on P100, P250. This year, we are launching a P500 on May 7 and 8, it will be the opportunity to inaugurate the second track. Afterwards, in terms of development, the idea is also to set up the padel school. For that, we will have to offer training. We have already started, with four sessions per week but we must continue to increase. 

On padel, one observation is that we don't have many young people. The majority of players are between 40 and 60 years old, so one of the objectives would also be to rejuvenate our audience. Young people should only represent 20% of players. We have already offered trial sessions to young people who generally like the practice right away. There is more communication work to be done so that they learn about this sport before getting started.

We will also graduate our tennis teacher who will follow specific training for padel. She will thus be authorized to give lessons. I think that in the long term, we will see more and more padel coaches who will launch and will be more specialized in the discipline.

The club could eventually try to offer cover on one of the tracks
thomas jay

After being rocked by tennis for almost 15 years, I became an absolute fan of its cousin, padel. For almost a year now, it is with another racket that I have been chasing the little yellow ball but with just as much passion! Based in Lyon, I intend to make you more aware of padel in the region and at the national level.

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