This week, we were lucky enough to catch up with Joanne Patterson. As a Padel coach, she has a real passion for the sport and what it brings for people. Her outlook on the sport is unique and there is a clear eagerness to engage more females within the fastest growing sport on a grassroots level.

Joanne has had a plethora of racquet sport experience and has been in and amongst Tennis and Padel for several years. The reasoning which she shared for moving from Tennis coaching to Padel coaching was largely due to the loneliness felt within Tennis coaching. You’re so far away from the person you’re training there is a limited element of sociability. 

Despite her vast experience within racket sports, she has a real focus on participation, and competition is not the overall goal.

“A major barrier with getting woman involved is that they need persuasion. So, my intro to Padel has become a fine art over my years teaching it” – Joanne said.

The topic of persuasion is an interesting one as we have seen on social media the numerous videos of people playing in torrential rain and even heavy snow. From this impression on social media, it would seem as though that it is not an issue, however there clearly is, especially with getting new women involved.

“All of the celebrities promoting padel, not padel related, are men (e.g Ronaldo and Stormzy), it needs someone such as Taylor Swift to pick up a racket. It needs more female representation. The sport needs to be made around health and wellness, girls who don’t engage in sports regularly, it will engage them due to the social aspect.”

Evidently, this is a clear gap in the market for a big female star to get involved with the sport, even a Tennis star such as Emma Raducanu promoting the sport could do wonders for the female side of Padel.

One of the major implications within the women’s game which Joanne highlighted was despite the women’s socials at clubs being full on a weekly basis, it is typically the same people attending each session. The issue that arises with this is it limits your outreach and Joanne stated that “there is a real need to engage with the existing dominant female communities and bring them within the sport.“

“Engagement in schools is where it needs to be started, you do not need a padel court to teach them.”

This is an important topic as we have seen Jason Manford and Soul Padel launch their school initiatives recently, the introduction of Padel to schools will inadvertently improve the female participation. The emphasis on the fact that a Padel court is not needed to teach the sport as this is something which has not been touched upon but could be imperative to engage the youth of today.

“It is really important to feminise Padel, needs to be shown its okay to be feminine, needs to be female orientated and show it’s okay to play in their own way“

It is paramount that clubs adopt this mentality and understanding of making clubs more female orientated and to feminise it. Joanne has a real passion for doing this to enable a more comfortable experience for women within the sport.

It’s key to acknowledge these gaps within the most exciting and fast growing sport in the world, however it is also exciting to see how Joanne and people alike can alter the future of the women’s game!

If you would like to book onto a social as mentioned within the article go onto the ‘activities’ section on Playtomic! All enquiries: ProperPadel@gmail.com.

Subscribe to our mailing list today to stay updated with the latest content