It is now necessary to register directly with Pickleball Canada (PCO) and Pickleball Alberta (and with our club) using the Pickleball Canada National System (PCNS). Here you will pay the PCO and PA fees, and zero for your SAPC membership. Then you can join SAPC using this site, and pay your SAPC fee. Note that this SAPC fee formerly included your fees to PCO and PA, and now these are paid separately, so your SAPC fee has been reduced accordingly. See the questions that follow for more details.
The first step is to renew with Pickleball Canada (PCO) and Pickleball Alberta (PA) to link you to our club on the PIckleball Canada National System (PCNS).
The second step is to renew with SAPC on this site, as described on the Join webpage.
No, you won't pay PCO and PA fees again, but you still need to connect your PCO and PA membership to our club, SAPC. Do that joining SAPC on the PCO site.
1. Use the same email address to access your PCO account as you do to access your SAPC account.
2. If you were a member of SAPC in spring of 2021, you were already automatically made a member of Pickleball Canada (PCO) and Pickleball Alberta (PA). Furthermore:
Your membership was in PCO and PA was made possible by lots of behind-the-scenes manual volunteer work at the club, provincial and national levels.
Your membership information is still on record with PCO if your membership was recent (since 2019).
So, when you get to the top of the PCNS member registration page, do not pick the "I am new to Pickleball Canada" option. Instead, pick the "I am renewing…” option and then pick LOOKUP MEMBERSHIP. The system should find your membership if that membership was in 2019 or later. (This is important to retain and re-use your previous PCO membership number. It also avoids the creation of a duplicate membership record which would cause you and some membership administrators some frustration later on.)
3. Your PCO member number is now a required field in your SAPC registration form. See some of the "how to" details below for making note of his number.
4. As a condition of our club's affiliation with PCO, all our members also have to be PCO members. We will have to monitor and enforce this requirement to maintain this affiliation. You can prove your PCO membership by having a valid and current PCO membership number, pertaining to you as a member, in your SAPC membership profile.
5. PCO and SAPC memberships are not transferable to other individuals.
2. Click on “Login” at the top of the page, enter your email address, and click on “Forgot Password”. You will then get a password reset email. Check your spam folder if this email does not arrive within ten minutes.
2. click the "Join/Renew" button at the top of that webpage.
3. Select the "I am renewing…” option at the top of the registration form and then pick LOOKUP MEMBERSHIP. The system should find your membership if that membership was in 2019 or later. (This is important to retain and re-use your previous PCO membership number. It also avoids the creation of a duplicate membership record which would cause you and some membership administrators some frustration later on.)
4. Complete all required fields, acknowledge all waivers, and proceed to pay your PCO and PA fees by credit card.
Why?
Well, to remain affiliated with Pickleball Canada (PCO), all clubs must use PCNS for the registration and collection of PCO fees and provincial association fees going forward. This helps PCO better manage their membership information which is prerequisite to being recognized as a national sport organization in Canada. This recognition is important; it means a better coaching and officiating program Canada-wide and it opens the door to better funding among many other things.
We need to stay affiliated with these organizations to:
retain the affordable sport injury insurance provided to PCO members and covering some injury costs incurred as a result of playing pickleball,
retain the affordable commercial insurance provided by PCO and required by some of the facilities we rent,
retain the affordable directors and officers liability insurance provided by PCO,
participate (as members and as a club) in sanctioned tournaments and in PCO and PA training offered to coaches, referees and other tournament officials,
have a vote as members of PA and PCO in the affairs of these organizations, influencing the management and development of pickleball in Canada,
maintain our special relationships with our venue providers and the City of St. Albert, and
support the development of pickleball in our community, province and country, objectives fundamental to our club and referenced in our club's mission and vision.
We intend to move in that direction as soon as PCNS has some additional needed functionality such as:
- event calendaring,
- automated event registration and payment handling,
- automated goods sales (such as sticker card sales),
- newsletter archiving,
- better website and email capabilities, and
- better membership management capabilities.
This functionality is coming to PCNS, hopefully within the next two years. When it arrives, or whenever the business case for abandoning our Wild Apricot system is compelling, we will make that change.
The present lack of event management in PCNS are problematic for other larger clubs as well. These clubs use systems like SignUpGenius, Track It Hub and Pickleball Brackets to manage registered play events and other events. SAPC does this and more with our Wild Apricot system, saving much manual administration for volunteer organizers and making life simple for our members.
