Image courtesy of Engage Pickleball
President’s Kitchen Sink Newsletter Report January 2025 Edition – Welcome to 2025!!
The Kitchen Sink January Edition, Pickleball BC (“PBC”) President’s Introduction
Welcome to the first 2025 edition of our Kitchen Sink Newsletter. The PBC Board and all of our team including your Directors, our Committee members and our contractors wish all of our members, clubs and supporters the best in the new year – stay healthy and safe (protective eyewear are not helpful in your bag)!
In this January 2025 issue we wanted to highlight: the Notice of our 2025 Annual General Meeting February 18th 2025 6pm with details below in my Presidents Report: reminder that our PBC 2025 BC Provincials will be held July 24th – 27th in Vernon hosted by the Vernon Pickleball Association; PBCA highly recommends protective eyewear and makes them mandatory for our own PBC tournaments such as the BC Provincials (including referees); a “From Our Clubs” good news story about Cowichan Pickleball Club who have utilized one of our Grants; reminder that our dues have gone up to $7.50/yr and we appreciate your support, so renew your 2025 membership soon; and, other updates on 2025 Tournaments, News, Policy reports and our focus in our Directors’ Kitchen Corners section.
Enjoy all the new news and updates in our January Kitchen Sink Newsletter and see you at our AGM on February 18th !
David Snell
President Pickleball BC
President@PickleballBC.ca
|
|
|
News From Our Clubs
South Cowichan Pickleball Club
Becky Warrington, Chair, South Cowichan Pickleball Club provides an update on the PBCA grants they had received.
<Click link to read more.>
• South Cowichan Pickleball Club
|
|
|
|
President’s Report
As outlined above, in this Kitchen Sink Edition we wanted to highlight:
Notice of the 2025 Annual General Meeting of Pickleball BC (Association)
Notice is hereby given that the 2025 Annual General Meeting of the registered not-for-profit society Pickleball BC Association will be held via Zoom February 18th commencing at 6:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time.
This message is being delivered to all registered and paid up members of Pickleball BC Association as of January 16, 2024. Individuals must be paid up members to vote in any matter duly brought forward at the 2025 Annual General Meeting.
We will entertain any Agenda item requests for 10 days from this date (please contact President@PickleballBC.ca) but all nominations for the one open Board of Directors seat are closed. Expressions of interest to join the Board are welcome following the AGM, especially from more remote regions of BC. Thank you for all your submissions to date!
The information package relevant to this Meeting as attached here consists of the following documents:
- The 2025 AGM Agenda
- 2024 AGM Minutes
Click on a Report above to download your copy. Additional 2024 Reports with the PBCA operational highlights of last year for your review prior to the meeting, will be sent to you on or before January 31st 2025 and will include: the 2024 President’s Report as well as financial, membership, facilities, grant programs, refereeing, Marcom, and Board Nominating Committee information, and our Activating Youth Pickleball in BC (“AYPBC”) program. As indicated in the 2025 PBCA AGM Agenda above, we will not be presenting these Reports but we will be pleased to answer any questions so we do recommend review prior.
Remember – the meeting is scheduled to start at 6:00 PM sharp and scheduled until 7:00 PM. The ‘doors’ will be open at 5:45 PM. Hope to see you then.
Vernon BC Pickleball Complex and Indoor Building
Reminder that the Vernon Pickleball Association (“VPA”) will be hosting the 2025 Pickleball BC Championships July 24th to 27th 2025 in Vernon and Coldstream this year. We are expecting 600+ of the best in BC players, 40 officials, 150 volunteers and hundreds of spectators and plans are well under way. There are several host hotels and they are filling up fast so make reservations as soon as can. Stand by for information updates and see further details here!
Protective Eyewear is Mandated for our own PCCA Tournaments (BC Provincials) and Highly Recommended for All Play
Starting January 1st 2025, your PBC Board of Directors has mandated that all of our tournaments, such as the BC Provincials will require participants and referees to wear protective eyewear. Also we highly recommend the same for all of our clubs and players across BC. Many of our Associated and Affiliated Clubs have instituted similar guidelines or mandate that we believe are now required given the growth of our sport and the higher level of play, even in recreational play. Too many eye injuries could have been avoided and many of which happen unexpectedly with a deflection that can’t be “foreseen”. We recommend “sports certified” protective eyewear, but there are many effective means of protecting your eyes and each club, court facility and player will have to decide what will work best for them – just use them!
Kitchen Corners Reports. Updates on Memberships and Refereeing noted above.
Finally, please send your Club stories and pics for consideration in our monthly “From our Clubs” segment, or if you can share some of your Club event pics for possible inclusion on our PBC website or Instagram, we would really appreciate it – for consideration please send them to Marcom@PickleballBC.ca.
This Newsletter contains plenty of new news which I hope you can enjoy over the Holidays along with time with family and friends. All comments and contributions are very welcome!
|
|
David Snell, President
PICKLEBALL BC ASSOCIATION
President@PickleballBC.ca
|
|
News From Our Clubs:
South Cowichan Pickleball Club
South Cowichan Pickleball Club’s “Christmas (2024) Greet & Meet” Interesting Games!
Thank you for the $500 grant that allowed us to purchase 200 Franklin X40 Pickleballs for our South Cowichan Pickleball Club.
When deciding where to purchase the pickleballs I referred to your website and saw that Franklin was a sponsor and reached out to you for contact information and was very quickly put in touch with Christina Davis of Sideline Sports. Christina was a pleasure to deal with and provided wholesale pricing, which enabled us to purchase more balls then originally planned based on Amazon pricing. Christina was also very helpful and provided information on further products and assistance in the future.
Our club will put the balls to good use at tournaments and the many organized events through out the coming season. The savings we incurred by not having to purchase pickleballs will allow us to purchase some much-needed equipment to clean the courts and make it a safe place.
We also used a few of the pickleballs at our last year’s (2024) Christmas Greet & Meet we coined “the third shot drop”. For a touch of pickleball humour see photo above.
Becky Warrington, Chair
South Cowichan Pickleball Club
|
|
Kitchen Corners: By The Numbers
January 2025 Membership Report
As of January 7, 2025, there are 12,045 active members in Pickleball BC. As memberships expired at the end of December 2024, it is expected that the 9,575 people who let their membership expire will be renewing in 2025. Assuming most of them renew along with some new members, we will have over 21,000 members. This is 3,613 more members than a year ago, which is a 20% increase.
Pickleball continues to grow steadily and in December 593 new members registered in the province of BC. At this time, renewals eclipse new registrations, which makes sense since many Clubs have opened up registration for the 2025 season. There are 6,446 members who renewed their registration in December, taking advantage of the 2024 PBC rate. PBC membership has gone up to $7.50 per year on January 1, 2025.
Many clubs continue to attain record numbers of membership applications. However with that said, there are several clubs that have had to introduce caps and waiting lists (which continue to grow). These clubs would readily accept additional people if they could provide adequate court space and time for them to play. It’s time to let your municipalities know that pickleball needs access to more courts. Pickleball continues to grow with more and more people of all ages enjoying the sport we love to play.
On December 1, 2024, Pickleball Canada emailed you a renewal link for 2025 membership. If your Club has not opened up registration yet, keep an eye out for information from them regarding their registration dates. If you did receive the PCO email, please keep it handy and renew with your Club directly from the invite as it contains a direct link to your own recorded personal registration information. If that does not work for you, log in and renew from your profile in PCO here.
If you are having difficulties registering or finding correct information regarding your personal profile, Pickleball Canada has created a Knowledge Base that you can access here, where you can research the tasks and processes involved in managing your profile with PCO.
See you on the courts.
Blair Morton
PBC Registrar
Registrar@PickleballBC.ca
Thinking of joining—follow the link!
|
|
Kitchen Corners: Head Referee Corners
Rule Changes for 2025
The new rule changes have been announced by USA Pickleball, and are in effect as of January 1, 2025. There are no earth-shattering changes to the rulebook—rather lots of small changes, such as grammatical additions, deletions, and clarifications. All of the rule changes are available on the USA Pickleball website.
I will touch on a few of the more significant changes:
1. Rule 9.B.1 will change the definition of volley from ” … the swing, the follow-through, and the momentum from the action” to “The act of volleying begins when the ball is struck out of the air before bouncing and ends when the player’s movement from the follow-through action stops.” This means that volleying no longer includes the swing before the ball is hit.
2. Rule 9.H Although it is still okay for a player to volley a ball while their partner is standing in the kitchen, the 2025 rule adds “as long as the partners, including anything the partners are wearing or carrying, do not contact each other during the act of volleying”.
3. Spectator Line Calls, Rule 6.C.4 This rule change reminds players that they should not be asking spectators for their opinion on line calls, but also that they are not allowed to accept any input from spectators. The rule change prevents both soliciting or accepting spectator input.
4. Rally Scoring (Provisional Rules 4.G.1 and 12.B.1) Rally scoring will be introduced for doubles play, but side-out scoring is still the official method of scoring. Double elimination tournaments should not use rally scoring. When using rally scoring, the game winning point will still only be scored by the serving player or team.
5. Calling a fault on your partner, Rule 13.D.1.a The current rule says that you must call a fault on yourself when you realize you committed the fault. The new 2025 rule change adds that you must also call a fault on your partner if you see them commit one. As well, the fault call must be made before the next serve occurs.
6. Serving Changes, Rule 4.A.5 Currently, “the serve shall be made with one hand releasing the ball”. The new rule change will also allow you to release the ball with your paddle. If you serve with the drop serve and want to drop the ball with your paddle (instead of your hand), you have to let the ball roll off the face of the paddle using gravity only (no force). Despite this change, you are still not allowed to impart spin on the ball.
7. Not Ready Signals, Rule 4.C.2 This rule now allows the receiving team to use a verbal indicator, like “stop” or “wait” to tell the server that they are not ready … after the server has already called the score. Previously this was not allowed. “Not ready” signals, like hand motions, etc., are still to be ignored by the server, as they are not allowed after the score has been called.
I hope the above seven rule changes help you out as we get into a new year of pickleball. As I said, there are many more that have been introduced, and are available on the USA Pickleball website under “Officiating”.
If I can help you out in any way with regards to the rules, please contact me at headrefferee@pickleballbc.ca
Enjoy Pickleball …
Rick Folk
Head Referee
HeadReferee@PickleballBC.ca
|
|
|
Sponsorships
We urge you to support and thank all our sponsors at every opportunity—they are listed throughout our website and in this newsletter. Sponsorships can help to defray the cost of hosting our website, sending this newsletter and also of supporting the running and promoting of tournaments and clinics.
Opportunities exist for businesses and individuals, starting at $25.00 to sponsor and support pickleball in British Columbia—details on our Sponsor Program page or contact Marcom@PickleballBC.ca.
|
|
|
Website or Newsletter
As always we are delighted to receive suggestions and/or contributions of content for the website and future newsletters. Send to Marcom@PickleballBC.ca.
David Snell
President, Pickleball BC (Association)
President@PickleballBC.ca
|
|
|
Leave A Comment