As part of its Advantage All gender equality initiative, the ITF is profiling female leaders and role models from within the sport. It follows a 2020 ITF Female Leadership Survey that identified the lack of female role models as one of the greatest challenges women face in their careers.

While 47% of all tennis participants globally are women, there is still a large gender gap in coaching, officiating and sport decision-making, all the way from club level to the top of the sport. By raising the profile and sharing the experiences of female leaders from around the world, the Advantage All Ambassadors series aims to encourage women to pursue opportunities in tennis and fulfil their potential within the sport. To find out more about Advantage All, click or tap here.

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PLEASE NOTE: This interview took place prior to the Beirut Port explosion on 4 August 2020. We have since been in contact with Valerie, who is based to the north of the city, to confirm that she was safe and happy for this article to be published.

“The blast has affected all of us,” she wrote. “Even though we are not physically harmed, mentally we are devastated. I was on court, giving my regular lessons, then at around 6:08pm we heard the blast – even though I am miles away from the site of the explosion. All I want to do is go down to the streets of Beirut and be part of the volunteering program. Last but not least, I am proud to be Lebanese. We are fighters, survivors, strong, and we will overcome this!”

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“If you look around there are two or three female coaches in the area – that’s it,” Valerie Maalouf notes. Fortunately, she counts among them, and her focus on laying the foundations for Lebanon’s next generation of tennis players can only help to redress that balance in the future.

A nationally-ranked youngster and top-ranked schools player in her youth before turning her focus to a coaching career in her late teens, Maalouf is one of 10 female Lebanese tennis coaches included in the ITF’s Global Tennis Report 2019, which registered 103 coaches working with a nationwide playing population of 2000. Lebanon has 40 tennis clubs and 180 courts, but its playing population is predominantly male, with women and girls accounting for 21.81 percent of registered players.

Now coaching with the Lebanese Tennis Federation, Maalouf completed her ITF Coaching Advanced Players course certification, formerly known as Level 2, in 2019 and is captain and coach of the girls’ Under-12 national team. She has also recently launched Breakpoint Lebanon, her own one-stop coaching, stringing and equipment business.

Maalouf’s student cohort covers all age ranges, abilities, and goals – something she flags as a key component of her lesson planning, particularly when it comes to children.

“As a coach, the most important thing is to actually understand why people are coming to learn tennis,” Maalouf said. “It’s very different if someone is learning to play as a pro or just coming to meet friends, to have an after-school activity. You deal with stuff differently when you know why the kids have come to the court.”

Nevertheless, her coaching philosophy applies no matter the age: “Whenever someone steps onto my court, they have to be 100 percent committed and give everything they have, because this is what I do. I give 100 percent myself, and I expect the same treatment. I always like that when they leave the court, they have learned something new – not necessarily about tennis technique, but something about the sport.”

Maalouf is not the only coach in her family – her father is also a tennis coach, and while both have their own careers their conversations regularly turn to coaching matters, and they happily share tips and advice with one another. But she knows that women’s access to sport, and a career like hers, has not always been the case in Lebanon.

'Gender equality in the work field is to have equal opportunities. Whether the woman chooses to take it or not is her choice, but when she has the same opportunity as a man, that is gender equality for me'

As a nation, Lebanon has won four Olympic medals – three in men’s wrestling, and one in men’s weightlifting, most recently in 1980. Having made its Olympic debut in 1948, women were included in the national team for the first time at the 1972 Games as swimmer Ani Jane Mugrditchian and 400m sprinter Arda Kalpakian joined the 17-strong men’s contingent in Munich.

Another 30 years had passed  when downhill skier Chirine Njeim became the first woman to carry the Lebanese flag in the Opening Ceremony at Salt Lake City in 2002; 10 more when taekwondo player Andrea Paoli followed suit at London 2012 as part of the first Lebanese team to feature more than two female athletes – outnumbering their male teammates at a Summer Olympics for the first time, seven to three.

“If you look 50 years ago, you don’t see any Lebanese women competing in the Olympics,” Maalouf said. “Now you have women competing in the kinds of sports that used to be ‘men’s sports’, such as shooting, judo and taekwondo. We’ve had women competing in Alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics, so it’s evolving.”

While the national culture is changing, it takes the commitment of coaches like Maalouf to ensure that change lasts. Unfortunately, cultural evolution happens at different rates in different areas of society – something she has encountered in the past.

“Many years back a man booked a session at the club, and when he came to the courts he saw me and he said ‘No, I will not be playing with you,’” Maalouf said. “It made me doubt myself, doubt my abilities – why doesn’t he want to play with me, am I not good enough? But after taking it, it made me stronger. It made me know how to deal with this kind of thing in the future, and it’s good that I’ve been through this. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

“We live in a difficult culture here,” she admits. “We’ve lived in a man’s world, basically, for so many years and it’s not going to change overnight. It means lots of work, lots of years to change this way of thinking in the workplace. I’ve always had the same opportunities as my male co-workers. I really would like to thank my federation for this – I’ve always felt like a part of the family and I’ve always felt their support.”

'We’ve lived in a man’s world for so many years and it’s not going to change overnight. It means lots of work, lots of years to change this way of thinking in the workplace'

That support has reaped rewards for both Maalouf and the Federation, with Lebanon’s Under-12 girls’ team finishing second at the ITF West Asia tournament in Bahrain in 2019 before heading to Kazakhstan for the all-Asian edition of the competition later that year.

“This was the most enriching experience for me as a coach and as a captain,” Maalouf said. “You get to meet all these new people, all these captains from around the world, officials and representatives. It was an awesome experience for me. It made everything worth it.”

Maalouf and the team should have returned to the West Asia event in Jordan in April of this year, but like most of the tennis world, such plans were dashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed down all tennis facilities in Lebanon for a month.

“The girls on my team and I were looking forward to it,” she admits. “We’d been working hard all year long and were ready for it! As for the COVID-19 crisis, I can tell you that it was a challenging period for all of us.”

Having followed in her father footsteps by becoming a tennis coach, Maalouf dreams of also walking in those of her mother someday. “I look up to her,” said the 30-year-old. “I see myself, when I have kids, taking them like she used to take us to the courts every day, to all the tournaments. I see myself like her in a few years.”

But Maalouf is quick to point out that such hopes for a family of her own are complicated for a woman in a profession that requires presence, energy and consistency. That need for equal access opportunities manifests itself in ways that go beyond the job interview – it can impact the decision to pursue such a career in the first place.

'If you love tennis the way I do and you are thinking about going into coaching, for me it’s a very beautiful path'

“Gender equality doesn’t necessarily mean men and women should be equal in everything – women can fulfil certain roles that men cannot, and vice-versa,” Maalouf said. “An example is motherhood.

“Gender equality in the work field is to have the same openings and the same opportunities. Whether the woman chooses to take it or not is her choice, but when she has the same opportunity as a man, that is gender equality for me.

“Here in Lebanon, coaches work as freelancers. We don’t sign contracts with any clubs; the day we work is the day we get paid. If I wake up sick and I don’t go to work, I don’t get paid. I don’t get maternity leave, I pay for my own insurance, and we don’t have a social security number.

“Women go through so many changes during pregnancy, and it’s not easy to stand in the sun for six or seven hours, giving private lessons, dealing with parents, running group sessions. For me, I think that is the main reason why we don’t have more women coaches in the area.”

By following her passion and waiting for the world to catch up, Maalouf hopes to shine a light on such issues so that the next generation of female players and coaches can pursue a career in tennis without compromise – a career she cherishes each time she steps on court.

“If you have the passion, if you love tennis the way I do and you are thinking about going into coaching, for me it’s a very beautiful path. It’s not going to be easy, there will be some stuff to struggle with, but no one said it was easy in the first place. Just be confident and don’t let anyone shake your self-confidence. And don’t ever be ashamed to ask for advice or help – everyone here has their own point of view, their own experience, and it’s nice to share your passion with someone.

“I think it is a beautiful path to go through. If you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work.”