With 2025 just starting its important to highlight the brilliant initiative that Soul Padel are launching this year.

Between January and March 2025 Mark Hewlett’s Soul Padel is giving schools the slots between 10am and 12pm. Alongside this, they are providing equipment and coaching.

All of these sessions for the three month period have been fully booked up with 40 schools taking part.

Not only does this help promote healthy living and an active lifestyle, which schools heavily push. It also could help young athletes fall in love with the sport potentially creating Englands future talents.

At Soul Padel they pride themselves on community and this further boosts the community that is already established there. In April there is set to be 4 new courts built at their Stockport site, this allows for more schools to use the facilities and the potential of the reach this could have is massive.

Stockport has 103 primary schools and 40 secondary schools, with only 27% of schools taking part in this it’s easy to see how this could snowball and become even bigger.

Mark Hewlett told the Padel Paper “ We will commit to this initiative at every club we open. Our vision is that it’s a free offer which stimulates young people to get into a sport, a bit like junior parkrun. It’s a genuine attempt to build a new generation of players.”

This is something refreshing and new within the community and hopefully the enjoyment factor is there for many of the children. Many kids at schools want to go play Football after school, so why not Padel?

A similar initiative which aligns with this is Jason Manford’s who has been quoted recently saying “let’s get a million kids playing Padel within the next 10 years”. This has been backed by the likes of the LTA.

Both of these will put pressure on clubs, Sport England and many councils to build new courts to help provide a future for children. Although this could lead to a future star being found it’s important to highlight how it will contribute to the active minutes which are recommended for children.

The social aspect of Padel helps stimulate the idea of community that is so ever present at Soul Padel. The further introduction of schools and youth into the sport will only benefit this and increase that is felt.

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