The organization of the Regional Championship Padel of the PACA League was implicated in the columns of Padel Magazine in the frame a shot of a player. If we readily admit that our organization is not free from defects, we would like to respond to the comments made.

We have indeed welcomed a large number of teams with players of a high level for some of them. We remind you that this is a regional championship open to the greatest number. We therefore welcomed players at the gates of professionalism (20%) at the same time as club players (80%). We have chosen flexibility with regard to the deadlines for team engagement, changes of partners, invitations based on availability in order to promote the padel with the greatest number…. This has led to notification of the convocations 72 hours before (when it is 48 hours at the French championships!) And to take into account the distance of certain teams in terms of schedules. Otherwise we would have had to refuse access to the championship to almost half of the teams, which would have been against the promotion of the discipline.

All game formats used are part of the federal specifications. Schedules were not made to benefit players on this or that court but to highlight meetings that promised to be spectacular. We hope this mood move has nothing to do with a first round defeat!

On the choice of the two sites, we had previously requested the clubs to have applications to host the championships. We received 4 applications including a site too eccentric compared to the geographical context of the PACA League and a club that had already hosted the championship last year. So we made the choice to highlight the two remaining structures.

The players were warned well in advance since on the registration form they had to tick which site they chose. Several meetings were held upstream with the two host clubs to set the specifications, benches, chairs ... were present at the CC Padel. Note that the Winwin site Padel has undergone management changes in the days preceding the championship.

It is true that the President of the Regional Commission unfortunately could not be present on these days following two unexpected surgical interventions and therefore could not intervene on last minute adjustments.

We were faced with misunderstandings related to the fact that on one of the sites the party catering, swimming pool is independent. This generated misunderstanding among some players and it should be noted that some were incorrect with the staff of the establishment.

Likewise the fact that the sites are not exclusively reserved for Padel, so there were other demonstrations that disturbed a minority of players. Either way, we will of course learn some lessons for next season.

We cannot let the captain of the French women's team which benefits from the support of the FFT speak of "Padel negligible quantity ”in our League. We are in charge of the development of Padel, discipline and not just the development of professional players! We have a competition service that works for both tennis and padel, beach tennis and paratennis! We were pioneers in the organization of interclub team championships (50 teams entered), a senior circuit + of 12 stages, gatherings of young people on 16 sites… The development advisers supported the clubs to put together application files financial assistance to the FFT for the construction of structures - with already 85 euros committed and new files in progress. The League should soon have two pitches of Padel thanks to the support of the Federation to work in particular on supporting young people.

In this case which has taken incongruent proportions on Facebook leading even to derogatory remarks about one of our employees because of his surname, it may be necessary to return to humility!

We have the humility to say that we lacked vigilance on certain points of the organization of our championship, certain players should have humility regarding the development of the Padel and their status. Tennis is more than a century old in France, we have century-old clubs in our League. The Padel is a young discipline in France! We are attentive to all avenues for constructive improvement but will never accept the gratuitous denigration of the work of volunteers and employees of the League!

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovers the padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since padel is part of his life. You often see him touring France going to cover the major events of padel French.

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