There was barely a dry eye in the house when Lou Stephens was awarded the illustrious Finnish Travelling Paddle for her services to pickleball at the recent English Open. Her big-hearted and passionate support for the pickleball community was rightly recognised at the highest level of the sport. To celebrate, Pickleball52 sat down with Lou to talk about her journey from Metropolitan Police internal investigator and international footballer to the adored queen of grassroots pickleball.
Typically, Lou Stephens tried to deflect the praise that came her way following the award of the Finnish Travelling Paddle on centre court at the Telford International Centre last month. As always, for her, it’s all about the people she cares for and the powerful effect of being part of a community.
“I suppose the award is partly for what I’ve done for the pickleball community and the sport, but really it’s all about the people at London Pickleball and other places where we’ve managed to make a real impact. It’s about all of us – it’s an award for everybody,” she says.
The giant paddle was handed over by Tuomo Antikainen of the Finnish Pickleball Association, who founded the award in 2017, when Elaine Shallcross BEM was its first winner. Each year since, it has been presented by the previous year’s recipient. As the 2023 winners from the Ukrainian Pickleball Federation were not in Telford, Lou had assumed it wasn’t being presented.
She was “conned” by Trevor Robinson from Eden Valley Pickleball into making her way on to centre court, believing there was an “issue” which needed her attention. Arriving there to find a packed crowd and a camera crew, Thaddea Lock told her they needed her to do a ‘tweener shot for some filming. “Well that wasn’t happening for a start!” Lou laughs.
Then the speeches began. Video footage shows her covering her face as realisation dawned. Lou is not often short of something to say, but there was a brief moment of silent shock. “I was quite overwhelmed really,” she reflects. “It was totally unexpected.” She has now set herself a target of photographing every single London Pickleball player holding the paddle. She has snapped about 160 so far.
London Pickleball’s first ever session was in January 2020. Having been part of other clubs that focused on performance, Lou wanted to start a club for beginners in the hope that they would progress to other clubs when they reached a certain standard. “Unfortunately, they’ve never left!” she laughs. The club now has over 300 players and runs nine sessions a week on its four courts.
“I call it a democratic dictatorship!” Lou explains. “There’s no joining or membership fee and you only pay when you play. It’s very much about fairness and equality.”
Lou has run many competitions and volunteered extensively for Pickleball England at the English Nationals, English Open and many other events. But whilst she enjoys seeing her players win medals, it’s pickleball’s positive human impact that always gives her the biggest buzz.
She says: “It’s great seeing smiles on the faces of medal winners, but it’s not as good as seeing the woman with Parkinson’s who is staying active through pickleball or the player with anxiety and depression at the one session a week which gets her out of the house and smiling. That’s what London Pickleball is all about.”
Lou first heard of pickleball in 2016 whilst on holiday with friends in Richmond, Virginia. She had never played any rackets sports before, only football, in which she had a stellar career, playing for Fulham, Chelsea, Millwall, Wimbledon and earning three caps for Wales. She is actually receiving a special ‘legacy cap’ in Cardiff next month. England legend Marianne Spacey is a lifelong friend and former flat mate and they once played against each other in a women’s international on the Isle of Man, but we digress…
Lou returned from that trip to the States and immediately went to an intro session at Concorde Club in Heathrow run by Leo Gonzalez where she picked up a paddle for the first time. “I loved it within 10 minutes – I was immediately, totally hooked,” she remembers. She went back the following week but her new obsession was to be inconveniently interrupted by a family ski trip to Lake Tahoe.
“I googled pickleball clubs near Lake Tahoe, found some places to play and didn’t go on the slopes once!” she laughs. However, disaster was to strike on day three of the trip as she fell on court and ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, lateral collateral ligament and medial miniscus. It was a horrific injury that prevented her from playing pickleball (or anything else) for nine months.
So Lou’s first year in pickleball was spent watching rather than playing. She helped Mike Daly and Jane McGuire create and run South London Area Pickleball (SLAP) from her sick bed, learning about the game and how it could benefit players from all backgrounds. Those stricken months helped formulate her own ideas and ethos of how she wanted to run a club, which would later became the bedrock of London Pickleball.
Lou’s long-awaited comeback was at the 2017 Finnish Open (the event where Elaine Shallcross was awarded the inaugural Finnish Travelling Paddle) where she played in a mechanical leg brace and was nicknamed Robocop. She won a bronze and silver medal.
Since then, pickleball has utterly dominated her life with countless hours of volunteering, coaching, playing and nurturing players of vastly varied experience, ages and abilities.
She counts herself “very fortunate” to able to dedicate a huge percentage of her time to the sport she’s fallen in love with. She took early retirement in 2012 from her job with the Metropolitan Police where she served for 27 years as station officer, in custody, duty rota organiser and latterly internal investigations officer. She then bought, renovated and sold houses and remains a landlord for several properties.
“I am in a very fortunate situation that I retired at 48 and can spend my later life donating my time to others,” she reflects. Lou’s own house rarely has free bedrooms, with various waifs and strays staying over if they’re in need of a place to stay due to various adverse circumstances.
One such person is Pei Chuan Kao (above), who arrived from Thailand on a temporary working visa in February 2023 and was welcomed into the London Pickleball community by Lou. In the 18 months since, she has won two English National titles, countless tour medals and was named MVP in the Major League Pickleball Australia season two finale on the Gold Coast last weekend.
“Watching Pei achieve so much makes me want to cry,” says Lou. “I know that her feeling like she’s got a family and a home in England gives her the freedom to go and just play. Things like winning the MLP Australia; she’s able to do that because she knows she is loved at London Pickleball.
“Yes it’s a sport that we all love and are addicted to, but for me it’s about the people. Sport enables you to connect with people and help them if they’re in difficult life or physical situations. That’s the essence of it for me and it always will be.”
Louise and the early adopters of pickleball are the foundations of pickleball in this country. A well deserved recipient of the travelling paddle.