PICKLEBALL TOURNAMENT

This past week has been all about pickleball.  Our resort hosted the Happy Trails Classic pickleball tournament that started on Monday morning and ended on Friday afternoon.  There were just less than 300 players from all over entered in the tournament in a variety of skill levels and age groups.  The minimum age was 50 and if there were enough players at a particular skill level, they split the groups into 50+ and 65+.

Monday’s competition was Women’s Doubles, Tuesday and Wednesday were Mixed Doubles and Thursday and Friday were the Men’s Doubles.  We entered the mixed competition and had some good games but didn’t win any medals.  The first couple that we played against went on to win the Gold medal so we didn’t feel bad about losing to them, especially considering they were close games.

The tournament was well organized and the number of people that volunteered was amazing.  We volunteered for line judging which was a new experience for us.  All the games had a referee but the players themselves were responsible to call a ball that landed near the outside court lines as “in” or “out.”  During the Gold and Silver medal matches, there were 4 line judges:  2 positioned to view the sidelines and 2 to view the baselines.  These judges have to watch the game closely and call all the “out” shots.  You sure don’t want to miss seeing a shot or make the wrong call!!  We line judged 4 games and enjoyed the process.

THREE LINE JUDGES SITTING ON THE CHAIRS

OUR VERSION OF VANNA WHITE DISPLAYING THE SCORE

CAN YOU FIND THE BALL?

  

Other than that, we watched a lot of games and cheered on the members from our pickleball club.  We had 10 courts dedicated to the tournament so there wasn’t much opportunity for us to play during the week.  The weather was exceptionally good for this time of year with only 1 cloudy day on Friday.  So next week, we’re back to the routine with regular play.