The Bandeja Magazine Issue 1

coaching
Coaching, coffee
& competing
Sports coach Nicky Horn is passionate about inspiring
women of all ages into racket sports. She started with
squash and racketball in her home county of Yorkshire and
then found padel and has since encouraged more than
150 women to take it up. Here she talks about her winning
formula for getting females of all ages on to court (and
yes, it does involve What’s App groups!)
I
can’t believe how many females are
loving padel. It’s just so different to
tennis and squash. Tennis is a great
game to play and watch but it’s difficult
to take up if you didn’t learn at school
or as a junior. Squash is a smaller sport
and not as accessible - and it’s tough
to learn with the small ball. Padel is
much easier and you can feel success
so much sooner. Within minutes most
people can hit the ball and start feeling
like a tennis player and a sportswoman.
I coach squash at Harrogate Sports
& Fitness Centre, which also has a
padel court. We set up a What’s App
group for ladies that I met at the club
and I started coaching them in padel.
Within months we had six hours of
coaching scheduled per week,
70 ladies on What’s App and lots of
social games followed by coffee.
The next club - Rawdon Golf & Lawn
Tennis Club - was slightly different.
Tucked away behind houses, fewer
people walked past and saw its padel
court. We advertised and got our
‘early followers’ and then we followed
a similar pattern to Harrogate. Many
tennis players tried it and, again, the
What’s App group took off. This time
we booked in six week coaching
sessions to work around school
terms and soon had 50 women on
the group. To build on the coaching
we organised a team match against
the Harrogate club - 16 women in each
team – with drinks, mince pies and
laughs after. It was a great success
and a big draw. The club has created
mini leagues and social events which
has resulted in great mixed padel
events at the club.
Last but definitely not least is the
area’s newest padel facility and the
UK’s largest indoor padel centre -
Surge Padel in Harrogate. It has six
indoor adidas courts on the first floor
of a repurposed office building. It’s
awesome. Some two months in and
more than 50 female players have
flocked to try this ‘new’ sport. They
immediately engaged in coaching
to build their confidence, then in the
social and then as a community
building their own network of friends.
We’ve had a 24 women tournament
and what we believe to be the biggest
inter-club padel match so far in the UK
– a 24 strong squad against Rawdon
(see page 48).
By my reckoning that’s more than 150
females loving padel in less than two
years. The key points I take from this
is are that we females engage with
padel if we have a coach ready to
help us improve, encourage the social
element of the game and arrange
matches as we progress.
42 thebandeja.com