To everyone that helped make Saturday Night Pickleball a reality and the Page County Open Pickleball Tournament a HUGE success,
I'm not very good at emails but just wanted to send a note to everyone to thank you for everything you have did to help Saturday night pickleball and well as the tournament on Sunday.
We only have 1 more pickleball Saturday night coming up at Page County High School so I won't be sending out anymore follow-up emails on indoor pickleball at PCHS.
· The main reason for pickleball Saturday nights was to give local people a positive, healthy and fun activity to do on a Saturday night. Thanks to help from several people every Saturday night we filled all 5 courts at PCHS so we always had 20 plus people in attendance. On a couple nights we exceeded 30 people. The most teenagers we ever had was 12 in one night with around 5 of them attending every Saturday night. Most people attending were locals from Luray to Elkton. I would love to see even more teenagers on the courts but I feel we achieved our main reason for having pickleball on Saturday nights.
- · The gym floor is always a concern to me and I'm always worried about it so we limited the number of indoor nights for pickleball at PCHS. Painters tape seemed to do fine for the court lines but PCHS and LHS gyms are probably used more than any other high school gym in the valley. PE classes, sports teams, lunch, etc. heavily use this gym due to a lack of auxiliary gyms. I'm always afraid of the gym floor surface will get damaged and even though the floor usually is resurfaced each summer I don't want to push our luck with the tape on the surface. I hope that in the future our county can add the originally planned auxiliary gym and six additional classrooms for Page County and Luray High Schools.
- · A few people have asked if pickleball will keep going in our area after March is complete? The answer is maybe. The interest does seem to be good in our area. The Town of Shenandoah has approved us to put down pickleball lines on the Shenandoah courts. With hopes of someday adding a third court to the Shenandoah tennis complex so that PCHS "home" tennis matches can be played we had to also gain approval from the Virginia High School League. This week the VHSL approved pickleball court lines as long as they are blended to match the main color surfaces. Until the lines are painted we can use painters tape to make courts when we want to play. We would also need a "pickleball coordinator" to oversee any open courts days/nights. The nets, paddles and balls can be provided to local middle or high schools PE or afterschool programs if they would like to use them. Through the help of USAPA grants and admission donations all equipment is now paid for.
- · I do want to briefly talk about the people that seem to be attracted to the sport. Its much like tennis. A very diverse, positive and I'll even say intelligent and respectful group. There are really never any arguments, complaints, whining, etc. about anything. The people get some much needed exercise, laugh a lot and shoot the bull about anything and everything. One of may favorite sayings is "surround yourself with positive people" and the tennis/pickleball courts seem to always be full of them.
- · Now a brief recap of Sunday's tournament. The Harrisonburg Pickleball group organized the tournament and I watched over everything to help with anything they needed but my main job was to make sure we took care of the facility and maintained a safe environment. The Bailey family and Benson family is always there to help set up pickleball courts and they always do a amazing job. The Knighton family ran a bake sale that made money for the Page County High School tennis team. The 70 plus players and fans did a great job of keeping trash in the trash cans. I've never seen a sporting event facility so clean once everyone walked out. The organizers and myself emptied all the cans and swept the floors. Etremely positive group and a equally extremely talented field of players came from Richmond, Northern Virginia, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, etc. to join our local area groups. There was a young lady from South Africa that recently played college tennis at the University of Kentucky on the courts participating, JMU students and faculty plus Paddletek sponsored players. It was a long of playing but I never heard any issues or complaints. Many, many compliments about the tournament and the facility. Pretty cool to see all of this come to our small county!
Thank you all again for everything!,
Kirk Comer
Valley Tennis
