In this issue:
| AGM Elections |
Wrapping up 2023 |
| Call for Captains |
Training and Mentoring |
| DUPR Play and Ratings Sessions |
St. Albert Rotary Club |
| Membership Breakdown by Rating Level |
|
AGM Elections
The Club recently held its Annual General Meeting on March 27th. A key part of the agenda at the AGM was the election of Board members. Members should be aware of the following Board members changes:
1. James Porter chose not to stand for re-election as the Club's Vice President. The Board would like to thank James for his years of service in this capacity and for all of his valuable contributions to SAPC during his tenure. You will be missed James!!
Douwe Spriensma, formerly a Director at Large, was elected as the Club's new Vice President.
2. Jeanine Au was elected to the position of Director at Large filling the role vacated by Douwe as note above.
As a consequence of these changes, your Board currently consists of the following individuals:
President - Eileen McClean
Vice President - Douwe Spriensma
Secretary - Jenna McCully
Treasurer - Laura Spencer
Director of Communications - Roger Hutlet
Director of Information and Membership - Art Au
Directors at Large - Ken Dentzien and Jeanine Au
Wrapping up 2023
We had another great year in 2023!
Our members enjoyed thousands of hours of play last year, our programs expanded, and our club grew even larger. This all means that even more connections were made, friendships were expanded and lives were enriched. Thanks for being one of our friends!
Key Stats for 2023
- 976 members at peak (24% growth over 2022)
- 11,263 member plays at organized outdoor sessions
- 8,000 estimated member plays at organized indoor sessions
- 160 school kids trained in 8 beginner lessons
- 348 participants in 59 adult beginner training sessions
- 291 participants in 19 mentoring sessions
- 637 participants in 3 tournaments
- $47.25 adult membership fee
- $65,700 surplus (= contribution to capital reserve for future facilities)
- Untold amounts of laughter and squeals of joy
All thanks to our many teams of volunteers:
- Venue coordinators and binder administration
- Tournaments (organization, officiating, sponsorship and prizes, etc.)
- Skill rating coordination and development
- Reserved play coordination and play calendar management
- Equipment and facility maintenance
- Membership and volunteer management
- Communications and social media
- Finance and play sticker sales
- Nominating, auditing, ombudsperson
Further details and facts can be found in the club's Annual Report.
Call for Captains
Preparations are under way for the Alpine outdoor season.
Captains for all levels are needed.
Captains meetings will take place at Red Willow Church on April 16th from 9:00 to 10:30am in the morning and from 6:30 to 8:00pm in the evening. If you have not captained before, you should come to one of these two meetings and find out what it involves.
Anyone interested in volunteering to be a captain should send an email to venuemanager@pickleballstalbert.ca stating what session(s) you would like to captain and which meeting you plan to attend.
Please respond even if you are already one of our many faithful captains. We thank all members who volunteer in advance, as we anticipate an overwhelming response - remember, we cannot have organized play without captains. We appreciate all those members who generously donate their time in this capacity!!
Training and Mentoring
We are always looking for people wanting to help train and mentor our members and guests.
The club has beginner lessons most Sundays from 9:00 to11:00 am.
We also have mentoring sessions for the various member skill levels. In the summer these mentoring sessions take place on Saturdays at Alpine, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. We start in June.
We have again been asked to help train students usually grades 5:00 to 8:00 pm - that starts in May (read more on this below).So that is a lot of training/coaching. If you are interested in joining the training team please message Nicole Currie (nicolecurrie@live.com) and let her know and she will add you to the list.
Every two months an email goes out asking the trainers to sign up for days they are able to help with. So we try to have a schedule made for two months at a time.
Student Training
When it comes to the student training, please consider volunteering even if it is just for the students. Usually there are about 29 students so it takes up the courts and it is great if we have 2 trainers per court, as most students are beginners. The locations and dates for student training are:
Alpine:
Monday, May 13th: 1:00 to 2:30 pm
Tuesday, May 14th: 9:30 to 11:00 am
Friday, May 24th: 1:00 to 2:30 pm
Friday, May 31st: 1:00 to 2:30 pm
Larose:
Thursday, May 23th: 1:30 to 3:00 pm
Thursday, May 30th: 1:30 to 3:00 pm
Any time you can give would be most appreciated. Again, if you do have interest, please message Nicole Currie by clicking here.
Are you interested in taking some member mentoring sessions?
If so, you should watch the "Introductory Lessons and Training Calendar" for training events coming this outdoor season. Open any particular training event to read details on the registration opening times. If the event details say the registration opens at noon, please adhere to that time. Don't sign up even a minute early, even if the system allows this. We need to be considerate and respect fellow members. Thanks for making it fair to all (and for allowing us to manually get around the dreaded "midnight opening" for these particular event registrations.)
DUPR Play and Ratings Sessions
We are itching to get outdoors and play in St. Albert -- are you?
SAPC is pleased to offer even more this season than last. In particular:
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There will be some "Aspiring to 3.0" DUPR rating sessions, organized by our busy rating coordinators, for those who do not yet have a club rating (these will be at Bertha Kennedy when most other indoor play moves outdoors).
Our play is still limited by court availability and allocations by the City of St. Albert, but we are grateful for what we have!
We don't have a date for the start of outdoor play yet. That depends on when the City puts up the nets, as usual. And that depends, in turn, on the anticipated weather. We are, however, now looking for our sunscreen and outdoor runners!
Questions about DUPR?
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Registered players are placed on a court based on their specific rating. You play 3 or 4 games with the other similarly rated players on that court. After this initial round, the top scoring player on each court moves up a court, the lowest scoring player moves down a court, and you play another round of 4 games.
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To prepare, if you haven't already done so: (i) set up a DUPR account, and (ii) join SAPC on DUPR. There is no cost for this. The specific steps to do this are described on the SAPC DUPR Play FAQ web page.
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By the way -- if you know of any past SAPC members who have not renewed -- tell them to do so right away -- especially if they want to play in any DUPR play or rating session. Those who have joined SAPC on DUPR last year, but have not renewed their SAPC membership, will soon be deleted from SAPC on DUPR. This means they will then have to re-apply via DUPR to join SAPC on DUPR.
Thanks again to our rating coordinators and 2024 DUPR lead captains: Karen C, Jeanine A, Roger B, Kim S, Gord T, Carol A and Daniela I. And thanks as always to our lead play scheduler and venue manager Eileen M!
The St. Albert Rotary Club
The Rotary Club is holding a fund raising tournament on June 22nd and June 23rd. This event is a fundraising effort for St Albert community projects.
Registrations open April 15, 2024 - more details will follow via e-mail and other sources of communication.
They will need referees for the medal games and volunteers for other roles as well. If you are interested, please contact Daniela at ionitescudaniela@gmail.com .
The Rotary Club will arrange for a meeting to organize the volunteers and to assign work that needs to be done. Again, we will forward details once these are available.
We look for forward to seeing you there!
Membership Breakdown by Rating Level
773 members have already renewed their memberships for 2024. As is typically the case, many of our members - particularly snowbirds - do not renew their Club membership until spring or early summer. To that point, we currently have hundreds of members with a "renewal overdue status". If all of those members were to renew later this year, we would have over 1,000 active members!
In terms of those members who have already renewed for 2024, the breakdown of those members as of February (with comparative figures for January) are as follows:
February Mar (Current) Inc/(Dec)
No Rating 220 237 17
2.5 Rating 20 28 8
3.0 Rating 123 124 1
3.5 Rating 208 213 5
4.0 Rating 145 153 8
4.5+ Rating 18 18 0
Total Members 734 773 39
All members should note that memberships purchased prior to October 1, 2022 expired on December 31, 2023, so we request that if you haven't done so already, you should consider renewing your membership as soon as possible. For instructions on how to renew your membership, please click on this link (Note: Ensure you are logged in before going past the first screen).
Until next time keep your paddle up!