Picklemania MMXXIII

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.

The pickleball tournament fundraiser for my Rotary club just keeps on growing. I remember the very first year we had it. We weren’t sure how successful it would be but we knew we needed to do something that spring because we couldn’t have our Haus of Brews fundraising event due to the COVID pandemic. We planned to have the tournament in May 2021 but then the weather didn’t cooperate so we had to move the tournament to June. It was so freakin’ hot!

We had much better weather the following year but it got really windy in the afternoon and one of the canopy tents flew into one of the courts. Thankfully, no one was hurt. Last year was the first year that we changed the event to a team format (instead of just a normal doubles pickleball tournament) but it was a completely made up team format that I came up with based on Wrestlemania. LOL. You could tag in and out in between points (not during because that would be way too crazy and completely unsafe). Anyway, it was weird but fun. We had 16 teams participate last year.

This year we ended up with 24 teams but we still only had 8 courts so I had to get seriously creative. We kept the team format but change it to MLPlay (rally scoring) because it takes less time and the match durations are more predictable. We also did games to 15 (instead of 21) to further reduce the amount of time to complete each match. We kept the dream breaker tie breaker round because it added a fun, unique element, but still kept the game to 15, win by 1.

Here’s a good summary of this year’s tournament format:

Anyway, the format worked out great. With 6-team pools in the round robin pool play, each team was able to play every other team in their pool. After pool play, the teams went on to 3 different brackets (Elite, Advanced, and Intermediate) based on their results. We started at 8 AM and wrapped up around 5 PM. We were right on schedule. Couldn’t have planned it better!

This is what the pool play schedule looked like with 24 teams and only 8 courts. We basically assigned 2 courts for each pool. This meant there were bye rounds but it worked out fine because it gave people an opportunity to visit, grab snacks/drinks, go to the restroom, etc.

Here’s a fun video that my friend Jonathan Thorne made using pictures and drone footage from the event. I feel like we really exceeded all expectations this year. So much work went into though, as it always does. I did get to salvage some signage that I made last year like these ones.

I’m glad I thought ahead and didn’t put a year on them so we can recycle them for use year after year.

An improvement we had this year is a bag sponsor. Our friends at Bodyworx Physical Therapy provided us with string bags and player swag (coozies and pens) along with sponsoring a team. It was great because then we had a bag to put the players’ tournament shirts and other swag (stickers, overgrips, etc.) in. Definitely a step up from the paper bags that I delivered everything in last year.

Here are some fun pics from the event…

I’m so glad we finally got to play with Tanner Rice (red-head on the left) because the times that Ramon (Lozano), Katie (Merrill), and I have played in team events we’ve had to pick up a different fourth team member because Tanner wasn’t available for one reason or another. Kyle Rinck played with us in the DUPR team event we did back in December in North Kansas City and Jared Smart played with us in the “One Last Dink” team event at the Pickle Club.

I am so grateful for Brian, who ran the tournament so I could play. Kyle Starkel came out in the afternoon and helped, too.

Our team missed making the Elite 8 bracket by one stinkin’ game! We were in a 3-way tie with Bodyworx (Jen Tiano, Mike Ellison, and David and Lori Belew) and Mid-Court Crisis (Ling Wei Kong, Natalie Lubbers, Noi Sourinthone, and Scott Wolford) in our pool. We each had one loss (4-1 tied record for all 3 teams) and they were to one another so we had to count games won. Mid-Court Crisis won 16 total games. Bodyworx won 15 total games. We won 14 games. Only the top 2 teams of each pool went on to Elite 8. Middle 2 teams went to Advanced bracket. And the bottom 2 teams went to the Intermediate bracket.

We ended up winning the Advanced (middle) bracket, but pretty whichever team in our pool didn’t advance to Elite 8 was going to win that middle bracket no matter what because the matchups were sooo close. We had an amazing team!

Picklemania MMXXIII Pools

These were the pool play groups. In each of the groups, the first 2 teams listed advanced to the Elite 8 bracket. Except for in our group, which had a 3-way tie (Bodyworx and Mix-Court Crisis ended up advancing). In pool C, Team Equilibrium and FORVIS both had a tied record going into their final match so the winner of that ended up advancing to Elite 8. Equilibrium prevailed. FORVIS ended up in the Advanced bracket with us.

These were the other medalists: