My wife Tina and I hosted the event, with Tina cooking brats on the grille, assisted ably by Mike Wood, the club Treasurer.
Players here at Rincon who were not involved in the play were invited to come and watch and also to come for brats and beer afterwards. A few made it.
Last year I invited a few players to come over to Rincon for play, and those who participated enjoyed it. So, this year I wanted to try something different to see what it took, and if it was repeatable. The net result is that it is repeatable, and therefor I am hoping that with the board we will find ways to make these events happen with some regularity during the 2015 winter season at various levels of play, primarily 3.0 and 3.5.
Personally, Tina and I liked the opportunity to have some food and beer with the group. The challenge with that is that it is hard to estimate when the play will end, and it is a bit costly. In future, it might be easier to manage if we just provide water at the courts, and have a few suds or other beverages after.
Anyway, on this day we ended up with 20 players divided into 4 pools of 5 each. For players that I knew, I tried to seed them according to their skills as I remembered them from tournament play last year. I also tried to make it so that each pool was comprised of people from different locations to let players play with folks they did not play against every day.
We played with each other player in our pool as our partner, requiring 5 games in total with a bye for 1 player in each game. All games in the first pool round and the subsequent round were played first to 11 points.
Players got credit for the points that their team scored in each game, and we then totaled each player's scores to determine pool winners.
We then had a second round where the #1 players in each pool played together, the #2's, #3's and #4"s as well. Again, each player played with each other player as his/her partner, and this required 3 games to complete.
Here are the pools of players:
| Pools | ||
| Name | Club | Pool |
| Gale Evans | SPC | 1 |
| Bert Coates | RCW | 1 |
| Bob Crawford | TRFC | 1 |
| Priscilla Scott | Voyager | 1 |
| Lee Elmore | Tucson | 1 |
| Michael Brandon | RCW | 2 |
| Michael Botwin | TRFC | 2 |
| Bob Lutz | Tucson | 2 |
| Paul Barksdale | Voyager | 2 |
| Ken Beutel | TRFC | 2 |
| Mike Clemens | Green Valley | 3 |
| Gerry Eubanks | RCW | 3 |
| Cindy Lutz | Tucson | 3 |
| Bill Scott | Voyager | 3 |
| Ken Zacharias | RCW | 3 |
| Penny Cobb | RCW | 4 |
| Jerry King | TRFC | 4 |
| Bill Stickney | SPC | 4 |
| Eitan Weisner | TRFC | 4 |
| Dave Bobanick | Voyager | 4 |
Those players who ended up playing in the #1's pool were Bob Crawford from Pool 1, Bob Lutz from Pool 2, Mike Clemens from Pool 3, and Eitan Weisner from Pool 4.
Mike Clemens prevailed by one point over Eitan Weisner to be our overall winner.
We had our beer and brats by poolside under the lanai there, with Tina and Mike Wood on the grille. The brats were perfect, the beer was cold and the potato chips were crunchy. I had had a request for sauerkraut and discovered that sauerkraut on brats is a tasty treat. We have enough brats and sauerkraut left over for me to get sick of it.
Dale Haven Cox, the Activities Director here at Rincon joined us after play and shared a few minutes about the 137 activities that we have here at Rincon.
One of my hopes was to introduce out of park players to our new facilities, and invite them to become winter non resident members of our club. For us to grow our club we need to do two things and do them well. We must continue to address the needs of our purely recreational players, while providing opportunity for those who wish to become more competitive to grow their games.
We will recognize the rec players with dedicated court times for Open fun play, and the opportunity to attend coaching sessions regularly through the winter. Bert Coates is gathering the coaching aids that he will be using for those sessions beginning in January.
We will recognize the needs of those who wish to play a more competitive style with events like this, and by adding competitive non resident members, while we also build our internal membership.
We will also be holding regular skills workshops beginning in January for practice times with particular drills and games meant to improve the skill set of those who wish it. These sessions will be open to recreation and competitive players.
So, for my money our Shootout the other say was a success, and I hope that all who attended enjoyed it as much as I did.
If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to contact me directly.
Michael Brandon
President
Rincon Country West Pickleball Club
mbrandon8026@gmail.com
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