Picklemania MMXXII
Posted on June 10, 2024 by Ching under Community, Pickleball.
I know this recap is very, very late but it always takes me a while to recover from Picklemania. It is such a relief when it’s all over!
A bunch of us met at the tournament on Friday afternoon to tape the courts, assemble the portable nets, and hang up signage. Since most of the volunteers were coming at 3 PM, and Brian couldn’t get off work until 3 o’clock, we decided to load up his car the night before so then he could come straight from work instead of driving home first and taking another 20 minutes to load the car. He had to go to work on Friday morning with his car like this.
It didn’t take long to get all the signs hung up.
Taping the courts went pretty smoothly also. Half of the courts were painted so we really only had to make six pickleball courts. And, the markings we left from the October Minor League Pickleball event were still there so the guys didn’t really have to do any measuring. That saved ton of time!
This is a little highlight video that I made of the entire day. Brian and I left the house around 6 AM to meet Devin at the venue at 6:30 AM so we could unload and assemble the Wichita Wagonmasters tent canopies. That was the only time that worked for him because he had another commitment that morning. The tournament technically didn’t start until 8:30 AM but there were some players who were there by 7 o’clock, before our check-in desk volunteers were even there and before we were completely set up. The one thing I can say about Wichita players, they are very enthusiastic and most of them show up an hour early to events. Early is always better than late but, if you’re not ready for them, it can be overwhelming.
We were worried about the weather leading up to the event and I had several people text me asking about our “weather contingency plan” but, other than being quite windy during parts of the day, the weather turned out perfect. We did run later than I expected but I think things went smoothly overall. The competition was intense in all divisions and our champions (we had 4 divisions of 8 teams each) really earned their medals.
I am so grateful to all the players, sponsors, and volunteers for making our annual pickleball tournament a huge success. Now off to planning next year’s event!
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