Gearing Up for Picklemania
Posted on February 2, 2022 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
My Rotary club has started gearing up for our second annual pickleball tournament. Last year we hosted our first one out of necessity. Because of the pandemic, we had to cancel our main fundraising even in 2020. Since we could not have Haus of Brews, and we had to figure out a way to raise money for our club projects, we decided to host a pickleball tournament. We originally planned it for May 2021 but it ended up getting rescheduled to June 2021 due to rain. We are hoping that the weather will cooperate and we will be able to hold our event on our selected date this year.
Last year our club funded the event on its own. This year we are partnering with local companies so it’s going to be bigger and better than ever.
Another significant change is in the format. Last year we opted for a more traditional tournament with social and competitive brackets in the morning, social and competitive brackets in the afternoon, and lunch served in between. Everyone got plenty of games in because we did round robin plus bracket play.
This year, we are still feeding lunch and including free drinks and everyone will still get lots of pickleball play, but we are going to a team-style tournament so it’s going to be even more fun.
Ever since I participated in the MLP-style team tournament at Chicken N Pickle last December, I’ve been toying with the idea of hosting a team tournament. I presented the idea to the other two members of the pickleball tournament planning team (Chris McGill and Ryan De Santis) and they approved it. I am super excited!
We couldn’t do full-on MLP because, when we did it at CNP, the matches lasted almost an hour and a half on average and we don’t have that kind of time. So we modified it a bit so that there are only three games per match for the round robin matches — women’s doubles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles — and best two of three games (same format) for the bracket play.
The twist is that for the mixed doubles game, it’s going to be “wrestlemania” style. So you can tag-in and tag-out team members during the timeouts, as long as the resulting combo is still one male and female. It is mixed doubles after all.
During the round robin portion, the plan is for all three games to be played that way everyone will get to experience the mixed doubles “wrestlemania” format. We will keep track of the number of wins and use that to determine the seeding for the single elimination bracket tournament in the afternoon.
In bracket play, we will do best two of three — so the mixed doubles game could potentially be skipped if one team wins both the women’s doubles and men’s doubles games. This is to save time so that the tournament doesn’t run so late. Anyway, those out of the tournament can continue to eat and drink and just hang out and enjoy. It’s a win-win for everyone.
So far we already have three sponsors committed and I have a few more asks I’m waiting to hear back from. I am really looking forward to the event this year because we are not doing it on our own anymore. We have others willing to partner with us. I think it’s going to be even more fun!
You can find out more about our tournament and sign up here. Form a team or simple be a spectator, have a nice lunch and some drinks at the country club, and enjoy the day with us! We would love to see you!
Until next time, GNG.
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