Dear Member - click the newsletter title to read articles on:
| SAPC Fun Tournament Sep 11 |
Pickleball Brackets Trial |
| Call for Ratings Info |
Upcoming Indoor Play |
| Membership Counts |
Public & SAPC Play Times at Alpine |
| Communications Director |
Volunteer Appreciation |
| Update on Larose Courts |
|
SAPC Fun Tournament Saturday Sep 11
Hold this date! A tournament is coming. Come out and meet new members and get re-acquainted with your many friends.
This will be a fun tournament, like our previous ones, where the emphasis is on camaraderie and enjoyment. Details are still being worked out, but here’s what we know so far.
- First, our tournament director is Ken Dentzien (Thanks Ken!).
- Our board member providing guidance and liaison is Gary Marcellus (Thanks Gary!)
- Tournament celebrates the 7th anniversary of our club.
- Open to SAPC members only.
- If rained out, tournament will be played Sep 12.
- We may be using Pickleball Brackets software for both tournament registration and for determining play times, court assignments, score tracking and winner determinations. See related article below.
- Round Robin format.
- Lunch included.
- Cost: tbd
- Stay tuned for a call for volunteers and other registration details.
Questions can be directed to Ken at kendentzien@gmail.com but please save most questions until the next news posting on this tournament.
Pickleball Brackets Trial
Pickleball Brackets (PB) software is a premier software product for pickleball tournament organization and more.
- It was very successfully used by Alberta host clubs for recent sanctioned (official) tournaments.
- It has just been recognized by Pickleball Canada as Canada’s official tournament and rating management software.
- It is now available for use at discounted rates by clubs (like ours) that are affiliated with Pickleball Canada.
- It is now being used by Pickleball Canada to calculate and track official tournament player ratings, and can be used by clubs to calculate and track distinct club and league-play ratings.
Organizing tournaments, particularly big ones, is complex work. It includes planning, scheduling venues, determining competition levels, scheduling play, handling registrations, recruiting and guiding volunteers and officials, handling last minute changes, reporting results in real time, managing lunch purchase and distribution, booking accommodations/halls, and communicating frequently with everyone involved. It is inevitable that as clubs grow, they will need software like PB to organize such events.
With a vision towards the future, SAPC is embarking on a trial of PB, starting with our relatively small fun tournament. This is our opportunity to learn the software (including its features, its complexities, and its foibles) and it is our opportunity to train ourselves in how to best use this software.
If you’d like to prepare yourself to use the PB software too, here’s what you can do before we put out a call for our Sep 11 tournament registrations:
- Go to https://pickleballbrackets.com/ and press the “Sign Up” button to set up a free account if you don’t already have one.
- After setting up an account, join SAPC within Pickleball Brackets:
-
- log in to PB,
- go to the home page of PB (click on the PB logo in the top left if not already at the home page of PB)
- go to the list of clubs using the “Club” menu
- scroll or use the search tools to find the St Albert Pickleball Club, and click on our club
- from the next menu, click “Become a Member” and complete the screens.
After requesting membership, your eligibility will be checked. Within a day or two you will get an email stating your PB membership in SAPC has been granted.
There is no additional cost for this membership in PB.
Call for Ratings Info
We are doing a bit of research to fine tune how we handle and use club ratings and to prepare for even more robust rating management in the future. If you have an official USAPA rating (or an official Canadian rating or a tournament rating coming out of the recent provincial or national tournament), please let us know. Send an email to president@pickleballstalbert.ca and info@pickleballstalbert.ca stating the type of tournament rating you have (singles, mixed, doubles, etc.), the recognizing body (USAPA, Tournaments.com, Pickleball Brackets, etc.) and the rating. We will use this information both to populate your SAPC membership record and to inform our future decision-making regarding club ratings.
Upcoming Indoor Play
Our venue manager (Eileen) and her team of venue coordinators are busy preparing for upcoming indoor play. Initial contact with all our previous indoor venues has been promising, and it is looking like we will have as much venue time, in each of our locations, as we did pre-Covid.
- Some rates are rising, and to contain indoor crowds we are looking at reserved play.
- Tentative start dates: late September.
- We will be resuming indoor beginner lessons. We have outstanding requests of 65 people waiting for these!
Stay tuned for more on this. Meanwhile, you can try to find those stickers you purchased a year and a half ago!
Membership Counts
As of Aug 16, our club has 431 members. Our breakdown by skill levels (club rating) are as follows. We use this information to schedule play, plan tournaments, and more.
Level Members
4.5 1
4.0 50
3.5 140
3.0 111
2.5 18
none 111
Public and SAPC Play Times at Alpine
You’re not getting enough play time, are you? Neither are we. But we are maximizing all the outdoor court times we have. We do hope to get more in September, when Larose Courts re-open.
In the meantime, if you are looking to play at Alpine during public play times, here are some reminders:
- Check the posted schedules at the Alpine Courts. SAPC uses ALL the play times and courts allocated to us by the City of St Albert, including eight courts on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
- You won’t see our use of the Tuesday or Wednesday evening courts in our online Alpine calendar unless you are part of the 3.0 or 3.5+ Shootout Pools and are logged in to our website.
- If using a public court and others are waiting, please limit your public court use time to 30 minutes, per City of St. Albert rules.
Communications Director
Thanks to Gary Spencer for his service as your Communications Director. Gary has taken on new work endeavours and now only has just enough spare time to play a game of pickleball or two, so has regrettably resigned. He will be missed.
Meanwhile, our Nominations Team is busy scouting for a replacement. If you are interested, please email the team: Scott Henderson (shenderson2@shaw.ca), Kevin McClean (kmcclean@telus.net), and Gerry Gartner (gerrygartner@shaw.ca), or phone one of them. Members can lookup phone numbers in the Member Directory.
If you'd like to see what the job entails, see page 6 of this document. For examples of what the Communications Director typically produces, see our recent news postings.
You'd also be joining our Board of Directors, a friendly team of folks who meet monthly to guide our club into the future.
Volunteer Appreciation
Our club cherishes all the volunteers who make it possible for us to play together. We are pleased to bring back our Volunteer Appreciation event. Thanks to Carol, our Membership and Volunteers Director, for heading up the organization of this event. Stay tuned for further details.
Update on Larose Courts
Re-construction is progressing well. Here’s what the courts looked like a few days ago.
Until the next time, "Keep your paddle up!"