How sisters Annabelle & Hannah Denly became padel coaching role models
• 3 minutes read
For sisters Annabelle and Hannah Denly, the opportunity to train and qualify as padel coaches has been a life-changing experience.
As the padel boom continues to sweep across Great Britain, there are more and more opportunities for people to carve a career for themselves in padel coaching.
Building on their love for tennis and growing passion for padel, Annabelle and Hannah have gone on to complete their Padel Instructor (Level 2) qualification at the LTA's padel Workforce Development Centre based at Rocket Padel Bristol.
These Workforce Development Centres all benefit from Sport England grant funding to diversify the workforce across gender, ethnicity and disability audiences.
Sport England support enabled the LTA to offer a discounted rate for women on the Level 2 course — an opportunity which Annabelle, Hannah and their mum Ali eagerly snapped up.
I'd say it was pivotal in us all feeling confident and qualified enough to credibly coach beginner and intermediate levels.
The impact of the qualification on Annabelle in particular has been dramatic, changing the direction of her career and inspiring her to help other women, girls and other under-represented groups discover the sport's many benefits.
Two years ago, Annabelle was working in mental health services for the NHS, using social prescribing to link patients to community programmes to improve their health and wellbeing.
Taking the Padel Instructor course inspired her to take her patients on to the padel court, leading to an offer to become Assistant Manager at Smash Padel in Bicester.
There, she founded a programme called Sofa 2 Smash (an adaptation of the NHS's popular Couch to 5k) which has helped a group of women reduce sedentary behaviour, improve their physical and mental wellbeing and make new friends. The impact on the players has been life-changing and Annabelle is now planning further programmes at Smash Padel targeting other hard-to-reach groups.
Annabelle, 25, is a Level 3-qualified tennis coach and county-level tennis player. Before taking the Padel Instructor course, she had only played padel a handful of times on holiday, but her affections have now been well and truly captured by padel.
"The course was a big stepping stone," she says. "We were all quite new to padel but as the course had been offered with a big discount, we thought, 'Let's give it a go!'
"I'd say it was pivotal in us all feeling confident and qualified enough to credibly coach beginner and intermediate levels. We learned padel on the job, so it was a really important part of our padel journey."
The course had a similar effect on Annabelle's 21-year-old sister Hannah, who is a Level 2-qualified tennis coach, former junior county tennis player for Oxfordshire and currently first team tennis captain at the University of Birmingham.
Inspired by the padel course, Hannah founded the University of Birmingham padel society during her second year. She has since built a thriving community of student padelistas and led a team of 12 men and six women to the UK PADEL University Padel Championships in Bristol.
Starting with taster sessions at the beginning of the year, Hannah now runs weekly training sessions for the uni team and is involved in plans to build some courts on campus.
"We learned so much from doing the LTA Level 2 course," says Hannah. "It encouraged us to get a lot better at padel and learn a lot more about it. It definitely made me a better player, which is what made me continue to play and then grow it at university. I've enjoyed it so much."
The girls' mum Ali also completed the padel coaching course with them in Bristol. A former competitor at Junior Wimbledon who earned a Blue at Oxford, she is also a Level 4 tennis coach. She is now starting to deliver one-to-one padel lessons to some of her tennis clients in Thame, Oxfordshire.
Sarah Thomas, Coach Development Manager at Rocket Padel, said: "It's so brilliant to see how much the course impacted on Annabelle, Hannah and Ali. The LTA offered 50% off for females and it ended up completely changing the paths of both Annabelle and Hannah.
"Achieving more equality in padel's coaching workforce is really important. The lovely thing about the sport is it's really simple to start playing, but once you understand that it's quite complex tactically and technically, that bring a big demand for coaching.
"It then becomes really important to have a diverse coaching workforce. Different players want different coaches, so it's having a choice of coach who works for you. Training and tutoring female coaches is a big part of the picture. After all, you've got to see it, to be it!"
How to encourage female padel coaches
- Ensure there is a female voice within coaching, officiating, and decision-making / leadership roles at your venue
- Promote Coaching pathways for women and girls through the LTA Padel Instructor Course
- Promote female learner coach grants and mentoring programme opportunities promoted
- Implement policies supporting maternity, menopause, and equal pay
- Give appropriate consideration to protect lone workers
Want to become a padel coach?
Find out more about our LTA padel coaching qualifications and discover your nearest Workforce Development Centre.
