General Discussion

This has been a hot topic recently.

Here are some things to consider. Warning, VERY long post.

Many of the island city run sign-ups are through perfectmind. CR, Black Creek, Oak Bay are ones that we've signed up for sessions through and they all use this system.

PROS - if you are one of the x number of first people to click register, it holds your spot for a few minutes so you can complete your registration details.

CONS - still the fastest to click

The club run sign-ups I have done on the mainland used courtreserve. and lower island was playtimescheduler

PROS - saved information in your profile

CONS - still fastest to click

Differences between the two types.

City sessions are typically open or broadly termed beginner, intermediate, advanced.

The club run ones typically have DUPR rated (suggested) or verified (can only sign up with verified DUPR in that category) sessions to allow for leveled play. Larger communities have dedicated pickleball facilities with 6+ courts available all day long. This way they can offer blocks for court reservations as well as several time slots that are level based.

ALL the systems I have seen are 'first to click' sign up.

Court rentals offer fewer sign up spots and make it more difficult to track who is playing (if we're strictly saying no more than x sessions/week)

Open play often creates games of imbalanced ability or intensity.

Tiered or leveled courts allow for both more people to register individually AND more evenly matched games BUT relies on people accurately knowing their appropriate playing level.

A quick look on DUPR and some of the tiered sessions from last month indicates that there are several issues.

• people over/under estimating their ability

• people with no DUPR rating or ratings so old that they are nowhere close to accurate now

• people with a DUPR rating that doesn't accurately match their current ability due to playing in several tournaments or having played more games in other communities with higher or lower averages.

All the sign-up options for court reservations, open play, tournaments, etc. I have seen rely on first to click methods of sign up.

For the city part, there are several sports that use the whole SPX gym and routinely still have 30+ spots left the day of or day before.. They aren't behind a time wall either. It is definitely a justification to ask them to shift some of their programming between facilities (4 courts at CC vs 6 at SPX) and/or add more spots.

For the club part, we have grown big enough that there aren't enough sessions to accommodate every member playing 2-3 times a week even with our club connections getting us the CRBC sessions.

The reality of sign-up is that the demand far exceeds the supply of available playing spots. The only times I have seen slow sign ups were when there were several sessions that day. (Last month's Saturday evening sessions sometimes took a bit to fill up due to 8 hours of CRBC sessions before that time slot. Sunday evening was after Advanced session and 2 CC sessions earlier in the day) That would be more like the availability we might have with a 24-hour pickleball facility.

There are roughly 200 total city spots and just over 200 club spots a week for 400 TOTAL including spares for each court. Our club website shows 269 members and that's only those registered to the website. If everyone had one session a week, only a handful would be able to play a second session. And that would be if NO non-club members played the city sessions.

Once the weather is good and the arena opens up, things ease considerably as there are more venues and more daylight to play, but Oct-Mar is very tight. I'm not sure what a 'fair' sign-up system that accommodates all scenarios such as like-minded (competitive vs. just for fun), similar ability, etc. entails.

Perhaps we need to be fundraising and working with city and community organizations to build a dedicated facility, but that typically takes years.

Anyways, just some food for thought. I hope we can find a way to get as many people out playing as it is a great and accessible sport for all ages.