Christian Collange: “80% of players who start playing padel continue afterwards”

The president of the commission in charge of padel in PACA, Christian Collange, looks back on the major advances in padel in 2022 among girls and young people and tells us about the actions that will be implemented in the future.

Focus

“By investing in young people, we train our future nuggets”

“We want to surf on the 2nd title of the French Interleague Championships for boys and girls.

We will continue the rallies and the detections. We should do at least four in 2023.

I remind you that we implemented a policy for young people in barely 6 months at the national level. And we have already succeeded in doing many things.

At the PACA league level, however, we have been working on the development of padel among young people for 5 years, which explains the results of our league.

We would like to focus on the U12s, in partnership with the coaches of the region.

The idea is also to set up an elite padel club for young people with support for training and youth events.

A youth circuit will also be launched for the U16s from March to June 2023 with a final Master scheduled for the end of June.

Finally for the U18s, team matches will be set up from 2023. We are currently working on it. We already have 190 teams registered for this year compared to 120 teams in 2022.

I would like to come back to the success of the Interleague championships in 2022, because we can see that the FFT policy is bearing fruit on the ground. We have seen this for example in the U18s with 12 leagues for boys and 6 for girls (i.e. double compared to 2021). But inevitably, we want more, that's why we're going to accentuate the training part and the gatherings for the U12s, because it starts from there! “

“France already has very good young people”

“During the last European Youth Championships in Valencia, we saw where we needed to strengthen and improve to allow us to compete with the best nations.

The key is training among young people. Our future nuggets will come from this nursery set up in the leagues.

And the good news is that France is already achieving small feats with a 4th place for girls and a 5th place for boys.

“Women’s padel: a federal priority”

“With only 15% of licensed female players, women’s padel is a federal priority in the same way as young people.

Many actions are being implemented around Alexia Dechaume, Marianne Vandaele and the padel mission.

According to our survey, 80% of women who start playing padel continue afterwards.

During our events and padel events for women, there are on average around fifty women per session who come to try it.

I'll come back to the young people for a moment because we see many young players getting into padel. I think that the work done among the young people will have an impact on the seniors in a few years.

This year we also have 100% ladies team matches.”

“A huge program in PACA”

“The PACA league has always been at the forefront in setting up events. And in 2023, it will continue and even more with:

U12 U14 U16 U18 rallies
The youth tournament circuit and Master final
The senior circuit plus 45/55 and Master final
The Regional Pairs Championship
Team matches (January to March), men, women and youth
Le tournament masters padel armchair this week-end
The university padel tournament
The establishment of a “team paca elite” club
The organization of a mixed padel team weekend

And ink other events to expect in 2023.”

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovered padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since then, padel has been part of his life. You often see him touring France to cover major French padel events.