So what does having a great pickleball tournament mean?
Well, have you ever attended a professional tennis tournament or been to a professional baseball, basketball or football game?
Those events are fun for both the players and the fans, plus the sponsors and vendors too. It is a total experience. It isn’t just inviting a few players to come and play and that’s that.
Having been a tournament director many times, I can certainly sympathize. Tournament directors have taken on a big task. Their plates are full and their checklist is very long.
After many years, I’ve also come to realize there are four critical components to holding a great pickleball tournament.
Unfortunately a lot of tournaments don’t understand these four building blocks, therefore their events end up on the “average or simply ok” tournament list. They usually don’t grow, and many times cease to exist altogether after a year or two.
What happens, is the tournament directors and their support staff don’t truly understand that each foundational piece is equally important. And so they tend to put a lot of emphasis on one particular area while neglecting one or more of the others. And that leads to a less than stellar tournament.
So here are our Four Foundational Building Blocks for a great tournament:
1) Create a great player and playing experience:
This includes things like having a great playing venue or in some cases simply a good playing surface while using a carefully chosen correct ball.
It includes the looks of things when the players arrive.
Does it look like a fun, great event? Are the courts numbered and signage in place for your check-in desk and hospitality area? Are there sponsor banners hanging on the courts? Are there vendor booths open and ready to greet them?
It includes things like, making check-in simple and quick, plus making it easy for players to know when and who they will be playing and keeping them properly hydrated. Heck, last summer we even brought in an air conditioned tent for our tournament players to relax in. Do you think they want to come back???
And very important, it includes having good, equal competition. Players don’t like to drive or fly the miles to get to a tournament, only to get smashed 2 straight matches and go home. Also, most players don’t like to breeze through a bunch of 11-0 games either. Neither situation is fun.
2) Create a great sponsor experience:
Besides player registration fees, sponsors are the lifeblood to having the finances to pull off a great tournament. Therefore you should approach and treat your sponsors like gold. A lot of tournaments merely go with their hand out, asking companies and businesses to give them money. These businesses are hit up for money many times throughout the year and their resources do have a limit. When you approach a sponsor, what can you provide them in return for their dollars or gifts?
Your sponsor committee should be brainstorming months ahead of time to come up with perks, advertising and exposure benefits that can be offered to the sponsors in exchange for their financial support. Win-win wins every time. Treat your sponsors well.
3) Create a great vendor experience:
With literally hundreds of tournaments now on the yearly schedule, players have many choices in which events to play. Part of their experience is having something to do while waiting patiently for their next big match to be called. This is where having a great vendor area is so important. But, much like when looking for sponsors, tournament directors don’t realize that vendors have hundreds of choices in which tournaments to attend or support too. Many tournaments call or email vendors merely looking for a handout for their tournament bags or raffles. They don’t realize that those seemingly small requests all add up.Vendors greatly appreciate it, and will have a much greater likelihood of supporting your tournament when you approach them with something in return. Your vendor committee, just like the sponsor committee, should be bending over backwards to come up with ways to make your vendors feel appreciated. They are businesses just like your sponsors, so anything to help them gain exposure and marketing will help. Hang a banner for them.
Do an occasional announcement or public thank you. During the actual tournament, doing things to make them feel special will greatly increase your chances of having them support you again.
It could be something as simple as bringing them a bottle of water or snack or maybe offering them a simple free meal at the lunch stand. Again, there are all kinds of ideas out there, but in the end, win-win wins. Treat your vendors well.
Create a Great Operations Team:
Operations for a tournament includes a lot more than I can cover in this short article. But essentially it is all the things that make the tournament run smoothly. It is the computers and monitors. It is the water station. It is the hospitality area. It is the referee desk. It is someone to clean the courts, check the restrooms and train and prepare all your referees. There are many aspects to cover, and all are equally important, but the main point here is to break all your operational tasks down into a checklist and have adequately staffed committees for each task. The more the merrier, and the easier it is for everyone, especially your tournament director.
So, having a great tournament isn’t just about getting a few players to pay and play.
Holding a great pickleball tournament is about creating a great overall experience for everyone involved, which includes your players, your sponsors, your vendors, your spectators and everyone on your tournament operations team.
I know I didn’t get into all the many details of building a tournament. That would take a book instead of a simple blog post. 🙂
So we certainly welcome your feedback and comments on this topic.
Hope your next tournament is a highly successful one.
-Rocket
DISCLAIMER: I wrote this article for those tournament directors and their teams who are striving to build great overall, professional feeling pickleball events. For small local or club tournaments, it really is just all about getting some players together and having some fun.
Keep doing what you do. That is the heart of pickleball. 🙂
Charlotte, NC, here we come! Who is coming with us?!?!The USAPA Sanctioned Atlantic South Regional Pickleball Tournament is coming to Concord, NC (right outside Charlotte) Thursday March 19 – Sunday March 22, 2015 and you won’t want to miss this one! This tournament will be held at the beautiful Carolina Courts on 16 indoor courts!
This year’s USAPA Atlantic South Regional is offering:
Men’s and Women’s Doubles (Age Groups)
Men’s and Women’s Doubles (Open 4.5/5.0)
Mixed Doubles Men’s and Women’s (Age Groups)
Mixed Doubles (Open 4.5/5.0)
Men’s and Women’s Singles (Age Groups)
Junior Doubles and Juniors Mixed Doubles!A social meet/dine is planned for Thursday March 19th at 7:00 pm…location to be announced.
Registration is open and closes on March 1, 2015, so get your registration in early! Online registration is available at www.pickleballtournaments.com. Online registration ONLY. No paper forms.
You can pay using a credit card through PayPal even if you do not have a PayPal account.
Hope to see folks from all over the US at this tournament! It’s going to be a great event!!
The greatest week in pickleball has wrapped up and everyone left raving about the experience.
One huge vendor tent combined with 28 courts and almost 700 players, plus dozens of Sun City Festival Pickleball Club and USAPA volunteers created the most spectacular tournament in pickleball history.
After watching players aged eight to eighty play over 2000 matches during the seven days, we have come to one conclusion.
It is great to play any time when you are at the National tournament, but if there is one goal that every pickleball player young or old should have, it’s to play under the lights. It is just special to see and feel the atmosphere at those matches that are played at the end of the day.
If you are playing under the lights, it means pretty much everyone has lost except you. The crowd is totally focused on you, the music is blaring during the timeouts and the TV cameras are rolling. It means you have survived a long, hard day and a medal is likely coming your way.
The matches under the lights are special. Think about the tennis US Open in New York at night. Yeah, it’s just like that, only better because you get to play in it.
So make it your goal to play under the lights.
It will be tough to do, but certainly worth the effort.
Good luck in next years National tournament in Casa Grande.
Are you registered to be a part of the world record attempt at holding the world’s biggest pickleball tournament? It happens every year about this time. Our whole “Pickleball Rocks” team is registered and ready to play. Plus we just sent in our yearly signed contract to sponsor it. This year’s USAPA National Tournament in Buckeye, Arizona promises to be the biggest and best yet.
From yesterday’s national press release:
Said National Marketing Director, Josh Grubbs, “we love being a part of this great annual event. All the best players will be there, and as usual we will use the nationals to unveil our new fall line of trademarked “Pickleball Rocks” clothing, plus we will be introducing a great new pickleball related program that players everywhere will absolutely love. We can hardly wait.”
The 2014 USAPA National tournament will be held November 2-9 at Sun City Festival in Buckeye, Arizona.
If you haven’t registered yet, the deadline is October 5th.
And as Josh said in the press release, “All the best players will be there”. I’m going anyhow. 🙂
It will be fun to see all our old friends and make a ton of new ones.
Hope you’ll join us there. I promise you’ll have a good time.
The USAPA currently holds five official pickleball tournaments each year: The National tournament in Buckeye, Arizona, along with four regional tournaments, the Atlantic South Regional, the Mid South Regional, the Southwest Regional, and the just completed Great Lakes Regional in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
SportONE / Parkview Fieldhouse was the scene for 3 days of fun, exciting pickleball. Things kicked off Thursday night with an open practice session for all the players. After practice, players took off for some of Fort Wayne’s famous bevy of great restaurants, like Granite City Brewery, Mad Anthony’s Brewery, as well as B Antonios and the fabulous Fort Wayne Casa restaurants.
After the traditional rules and guidelines talk, Friday morning kicked off with the National Anthem and then began a day of singles matches that ran from 8:30 am until 3:30 in the afternoon. All 12 courts were busy and buzzing in a day which included one of the best men’s 5.0 brackets ever assembled east of the Mississippi. After the dust had settled, Will Wilson, age 21, of Commerce Township, Michigan came away with the coveted Gold, followed by 19 year old Kyle Yates of Fort Myers, Florida and Rob Elliott from The Villages, Florida.
Just a funny side note, a Fort Wayne Journal Gazette writer, Frank Gray, after we told him that pickleball is a great social sport that helps seniors stay active, titled his newspaper’s tournament article, “Pickleball, Perfect For Non-Athletic Seniors”. Whoa, you should have heard the buzzing throughout the building when the word of the Sunday article’s title was discovered. Some present and former collegiate tennis and racquetball players weren’t too happy. Apparently he wasn’t paying attention to the action and athletes on the courts. 🙂
See all the Singles and Doubles winners by clicking here:
Saturday morning, our biggest day by far, we knew we had a huge task ahead with a building full of men’s and women’s doubles teams waiting to start. As we readied the courts for play, Roger Workman, our tournament operations manager, looked at us and said, if everything goes the way it should, we will be done by 7:00pm tonight. So with a small amount of disbelief in our heads that we could possibly get it all done on time, we played the National Anthem and headed everyone towards their assigned courts. Many hours later, the final match wrapped up and we herded everyone to the USAPA medal podium for one last awards presentation. As we walked towards the podium, we looked at the clock and it said 7:07pm. 7 minutes late. Not bad Roger!
Sunday had another huge crowd of mixed doubles teams, but once again the many tournament volunteers came through with flying colors and another almost perfectly timed day. Roger said we’d be done at 5:00. Roger would have been dead on except for the very last match, a 3.5 (65+) mixed battle (won by Bill and Eileen Regan) that ended up 11-9, 11-7, 7-11 and 15-13.
So after 287 matches played over three days, we ended at 5:30 Sunday.
A great tournament put on by a great city with a ton of tremendously dedicated volunteers.
A quick shoutout to co-tournament directors, Ken Flora and Julie Hollingsworth, plus referee coordinator Winnie Montgomery.
A lot of people were giving undue credit to the Grubbs family for putting this tournament together, All and we mean all the credit is deserved by these great people and their teams.
