Tia Norton opens council padel courts
Tipton padel courts
A West Midlands leisure provider is the latest to harness the power of padel, installing three indoor padel courts at Tipton Sports Academy in a move described as a ‘significant milestone’ for the area.
Sandwell Leisure Trust has invested more than £110,00 in the project, which could be the precursor to padel being rolled out at more of the eight leisure centres it runs for Sandwell Council.
For Trust CEO Mark Braithwaite – already a keen padel player – padel represents a rare opportunity to introduce a new sport with ‘real longevity’.
“In fitness specifically you get lots of fads, everybody’s always selling the next new innovative thing,” he said. “Whereas this is, I’d say, one of the few things that I’ve seen and got involved in that actually feels like it’s got real longevity to it.
“It’s the social element. It’s an easy point of entry. I’ve seen people who have not really played before go and have a really good knock around, have a good laugh and then go we’ll come back,” he added.
Two of the sports centre’s six tennis courts have been converted to make way for padel. The leisure trust now plans to develop the site as a rackets centre and fitness hub – it already has badminton, squash, a gym, swimming pool, sports hall and athletics track on site.
The padel courts – officially opened at the weekend by GB No 3 Tia Norton and up-and-coming player George Weller – are unusual for community facilities because they are indoor; only a handful of local authorities have adopted padel and The Bandeja believes Sandwell to be the first to provide indoor facilities.
Tia, said: “As a fellow Midlander it’s always fantastic to see more courts being put up in the region. It’s vital that the sport is made accessible via community facilities like this one so that people from all walks of life are able to experience the buzz and excitement of padel.”
Delivering year-round play, capitalising on having some of the few indoor courts in the area (public or private) and making use of the existing tennis court infrastructure made a compelling business case for the leisure trust, which hopes to recoup its investment in about a year based on a (conservative) occupancy of 25%.
For Shokat Lal, Chief Executive of Sandwell Council, investing in what is fast becoming the world’s favourite sport is an opportunity to innovate and ‘capitalise on new opportunities to make Sandwell a thriving and exciting borough’. “This is another first for the borough and I am thrilled we are bringing padel, the fastest growing participation sport in the world, right here to Tipton with our partners at Sandwell Leisure Trust,” he said.
Tipton tennis coaches are taking the LTA padel coaching course to qualify them to teach the game and the leisure trust is planning a programme of activities and competitions to introduce people of all ages to the sport. It has also redeveloped the centre’s cafe and reception area to encourage the all-important pre and post-padel socialising.
For Mark success is even more important because the padel plan was his idea, as he explained: “If it doesn’t work I’ll probably have to take a bit of ownership! But, like I said, I’ve seen this [padel] popping up at various forums and events I’ve been at. We were tendering for a contract a couple of years ago and somebody in the bid team said ‘look, padel’s starting to take off, we need to start to think about this’.
“People have been joking the reason why I put padel in to Sandwell is so that I can play more regularly, which is not the case! There is a genuine business case around it,” said Mark.
Developing padel at Tipton made sense because the site required investment and more of an identity, as Mark explained: “We’ve been trying to come up with a plan and it felt like adding padel and starting to make it more of a rackets club would really lend itself well. Everybody thought it was a good idea, we took it to the board and they backed it. The council was then equally supportive. It’s exciting because it’s the first padel courts that have come to Sandwell.” 🎾
Book padel at Tipton Sport Academy via the Playtomic app.
