JEAN WALLACH, the president of the Lyonnais league talks about his mission to set up a framework for teachers of padel. The vice-president of the French Tennis Federation in charge of training tells us everything about the implementation of this future training padel :

The certificate of professional qualification (CQP)

FB: We have just witnessed a great final and especially a great weekend of padel au Padel Club de Lyon, how do you feel about a president who does many things for the padel ?

JW: It's a great achievement and a great satisfaction. We are a league that discover the padel for 2 years and especially who react a lot. We are lucky to have a lot of clubs, the example of Padel Club helps us a lot because it is a very attractive club and therefore there are a lot of players from other clubs who have come, who are playing and practicing. When they return to their club they put a little friendly pressure on the leaders of their club so that we create padel which means that we are at 7 clubs in a year and there are a lot of projects. These projects are a bit blocked by the finances of the municipalities but they are generally registered so I expect an increase to about ten dozen clubs in the coming year.

FB: We have seen that some leagues put their hand in their pockets to help projects financially. Will the Lyon league start on this path?

JW: I don't want to kick in touch because I could easily say that the Lyon league will stop in less than 6 months and that there will be a big Auvergne-Rhône Alpes league and it will be up to them to see but for the moment this is not planned. We have a procedure called club projects and we help clubs with their project. So obviously if in their project there was padel there will be indirect aid but we are not talking about large sums. We start from the principle that the installations are up to the municipality to make them and we behind us support the club for its development. We realized that very often the municipalities could do it but that they do not do it because they feel that it is up to the federation to pay. The role of a federation is not to build, its role is to train, help development, organize competitions, everything we do to ensure that professional teachers are competent in padel that is our job. Building is more up to communities.

FB: You are also in charge of training for the FFT. You are directly dealing with a file that is of great interest to our readers: Training padel. What are you doing to try to improve this point?

JW: Maybe I have to say what I did because my mandate ends in 15 days. We worked on several axes.

1er axis: give skills padel to professional tennis teachers who do not have them through the training of new teachers and the in-service training of existing teachers. Thanks to a number of professionals who are already specialists in padel.

the 2e point: give teachers the opportunity to padel to have a diploma that allows them to teach because paradoxically one can be very good at padel have a very good pedagogy. But with the current French law if you do not have a State diploma, you cannot teach for remuneration. It's very difficult to get a BE and then a BE padel for the moment it is not possible because it is very long and very complicated to set up. The ministry offered us to make an option in BE tennis but there would be a common core and it would be very heavy. So we chose a light formula to save time, to do it quickly, this is called the CQP, a professional qualification certificate that we called tennis and all peripheral sports organizer. We put on the beach, tennis and padel in this certificate.

FB: The relationship with AMT? Is it connected?

JW: It is linked with the AMT but the AMT is specifically tennis. There he is a CQP animator and this animator will therefore animate all sports. We have passed all the 1st stages, the opportunity aid, the guidance note, everything has gone to the level of the sport branch, we are finishing the rules, we are in instruction. I think I will follow the file because there may only be 1 or 2 months behind. After the validation we will be quiet to be able to give this diploma to qualified people by having them validate the VAE. This means that we give this certification on file to all professional teachers of padel current. It will already guarantee the start. It is not an end in itself because we are not a teacher of padel but we are not attacked on its exercise.

FB: So it is better not to have the future CQP animator than the current AMT?

JW: Indeed. The CQP AMT is limited to teaching young people up to the age of 18. If we included the padel inside it would only be to do initiation among young people so we could not find its account with adult teachers while the CQP animator allows it.

FB: The CQP that will be set up by the FFT will not be limited to children and a number of hours that complicate…

JW: Limited in number of hours, it may be, but currently there is a great debate at European level since we are relatively under attack on this and I think that it will not last very long that we can limit the number of hours. It's as if you graduate from any trade and are told you can only work 2 days a week.

FB: Suddenly we can also hear some BE who took 2, sometimes even 3 years to obtain their BE and who would like to do padel ...

JW: But in the long term I think that we will arrive at a diploma of the BE type because it is true that this CQP is not classified very high in the hierarchy but it is all the same group 3 it is not ridiculous. The action we have taken is an action of speed. What we didn't want was that tomorrow there would be a youth and sports directorate that would go to see a padel and who tells him ''show me your degree, you do not have a degree you do not have the right to work' '. It's the quick reaction, now we'll have to redo the grid, really integrate the padel.

FB: In relation to the European regulations, the FFT has been attacked on a certain number of subjects concerning training, equivalences… will the CQP be open to people who have an equivalence in Spain?

JW: The notion of equivalence for the moment is not integrated. Folders are different folders. We have to go through different commissions and we can consider giving equivalences, but for the moment there is no link between the two. You should also know that in tennis it is the same thing; a top level tennis player is not allowed to teach either if he does not have a professional qualification. There is a training organized by the DTN where there are negative players even from the 1st series who pass an accelerated DE training. They are exempt from a lot of things but they still have to have the diploma. We are in a country where we are quite constrained by national regulations. So the equivalence exists but it would be valid for a Spaniard who would have a Spanish diploma. But a Frenchman who has been certified in Spain and who is coming back to France with this certification for now is not very well planned.

FB: So it is better to be Spanish and have a Spanish diploma to come and teach in France?

JW: I think it could go through equivalence routes that correspond to exchanges between countries. But we would have to dig that. The last person I interviewed at the ministry told me that we should look at professional titles but they are still procedures… The main thing for now is that people can teach quietly that it does not. is not limited. I wish the security of the professionals of padel

FB: Let's talk about your future, are you going to continue the work you started after the merger of the regions?

JW: I don't know. There will be elections at the end of the year, I don't know yet if I will be a candidate, I more or less intended to quit. On the other hand at the national level what is certain is that I stop because there are two very conflicting lines that exist and I did not want to intervene in there. I found it very deadly to intervene in this. But that does not mean that I will not have a national mission but not as an elected official.

Interview by Franck Binisti

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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