Best time for tournament

So, when's the best time for a Pocatello Pickleball tournament at the MEC.

First choice is "summer".  However, since MEC is one of THE largest regional indoor venues, a tournament could be played during any of the other seasons.

It appears that most or maybe all of the cold-season weekends are already booked at MEC.  So that reality might preclude a cold season tournament.

Also, bear in mind that the bulk of the players are retirees who head south the sunnier places to play pickleball.  Even though ME might be able to stage a cold-season tournament, whether or not it would fill is debatable.

Before considering a cold-season tournament, we feel it would be wise to personally interface with the managers of the Salt Lake City and Boise pickleball venues.  If a cold-season tournament was calendared through consensus with those folks, it would be a much better success.

Getting back to summer--that's when the Snow Birds are all in either their northern homes or prowling around in their RV rigs.

The key to "when" to calendar a summer tournament is in looking at the dates and locations of other tournaments.  If it would be possible to calendar a summer tournament on a weekend when there are no other Western tournaments, the theoretical success rate would be higher.  Likewise, if the flow of pickleball players might be heading farther west to a major tournament on The Coast, a tournament along the way could catch their attention.

We're thinking the time period from  mid-July to mid-August would be the first time slot we'd be looking at.  You don't want to be too close to July 4th on the left side of the calendar or too close to Labor Day on the right side.

During summer 2017, there are only 5 weekends that fit that criteria.  (Eclipse weekend is out.)

The tournament dates on the 2017 calendar would be July 15, 22, 29 and August 5 and 12.  I'd have to spend some time checking other tournament dates to see which of those dates "might work".

Small, Medium or Large?

Source: http://www.pickleballtournaments.com/Tournaments/UT/2017_MAYORS_1290/flyer.pdf

Designing, organizing and staging a tournament is an inherently complex and detail-oriented undertaking.  In any sport, any given tournament organizer faces the perennial issue of whether to stage a small, medium or large size tournament.

Large tournaments typically have a large contingent of people who help in many ways.  Small tournaments can often be stages with minimal staff and volunteers.  Medium size tournament run the gamut and are often as complex as large tournaments but without the staff to do things right.

We'd opt to recommend MEC start small and learn the ropes before possible expansion in the size and scope of such an event.

The City of Cottonwood Heights, Utah,has come up with a splendid concept for their tournament--keep it strictly Mixed Doubles.  This takes a huge amount of complexity out of the equation.  Of course, it likewise limits the pool of prospective entrants.  But the key thing is that the entire tournament can typically be staged in a single day.

Let's walk our way through a possible Mixed Double tournament based on the five skill levels.

If registration was limited to ten teams per skill level and the tournament filled to capacity, that would only be 100 people.  In a venue such as MEC with 10 courts set up, two skill level sets could be competing at the same time.  The entire tournament could easily be done in a single day.  It might be possible to showcase the medal matches separately in the afternoon. There might even be time for a nice awards ceremony at the end of the event.

Chances are such an event could/might/would attract a lot of traveling RV-couple pickleball players.  The event could be organized to take place on a Saturday.  Friday would be set aside as a practice day with drop-in play all day.  That way, participants would come to Pocatello on Thursday, be ready to practice on Friday and then play in the tournament on Saturday.  Because the awards ceremony would take place at the end of the day, most people would choose to spend another night and depart on Sunday.  If MEC opened the center for drop-in play on Sunday, many of them would undoubted spend the day playing casually and then depart on Monday.

If you choose to go the route of having Men's Double, Women's Doubles and Mixed Doubles, you are looking at a very complex, multi-day event.  As you know, it's one thing to get volunteers lined up for a single day event.  It's quite another to get volunteers organized for a 3 or four day event.

This approach would allow ME to "test the waters" of a tournament with minimal risk and effort.

Tournament name

It is vitally important to have a unique and catchy name for a tournament.  A tournament name does not need to include the word "pickleball" or the word "tournament".  In fact, many tournament names include neither "pickleball" nor "tournament" in their titles.

So, what are the key words that are most important?

Pocatello?  MEC? Idaho?  Southeast Idaho? Portneuf? Gate City?

What other words might be included?

Paddle? Regional? Slam? Show down? Games? Challenge? Palooza? Paddle Fest?  Pickle Fest? Open? Smash? Shootout? Rally? Classic?

Bozeman is doing a tournament this summer simple called Pickle Mania which would appear to be a spin off from the ever-popular "wrestle mania".  That made me think of "Pocatello Pickle Palooza"  Or Pocatello Pickleball Palooza

I always look at the acronym of a name and also the proportional letter count.  Note that I am NOT promoting Pocatello Pickleball Palooza, just using it as an example.  It has a nice acronym PPP or P3 and also decent proportions:

Pocatello  (9 letters)
Pickleball (10 letters)
Palooza    (7 letters)

Definition of palooza here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-a-palooza

The inherent problem with longer words is their difficultyin fitting well into a succinct logo design.
Pocatello, by definition, is a long word.  Unless, Poky was used, Pocatello is going to be difficult to fit into a tidy logo.

Bozeman's Pickle Mania logo is a sweet, tight logo that would look good on a variety of promo posters and SWAG.

We presume MEC work with either (or both) paid and volunteer graphic designers.  We think it would be wise to consult with one or more graphic designer(s) about any draft tournament name ideas that might be chosen for consideration.

Anyway, this should be enough of a narrative to get you thinking about names.  I have gone through all of the current tournament names looking for ideas. (Simply go to Pickleball Tournaments and then select tournaments by state and inspect each state's tournaments.)

One of the strangest names I found this morning is the "Washougal Rivers Edge Dinosaur Doubles".

Well, so there ya go!

Came back to edit this post after I thought of "Poky  Pickle"

Even better: Hoky Poky Pickle

Tournament Advertising

Advertising and promotion for a pickleball tournament are pretty straightforward.  By paying Pickleball tournament $52, the bulk of the advertising is taken care of.  Virtually anyone, any where looks first to Pickleball Tournament to see what might tournament(s) might be upcoming in their state or neighboring states.

Tournament organizers let their local players know through normal channels.  Typically, an email is sent to neighboring community pickleball groups or even to regional groups.  In MEC's case, the logical groups to notify would be Boise, Idaho Falls, Rexburg, Jackson, Logan, Brigham City, Ogden and all of the various Salt Lake venues.

The USAPA and IFP undoubtedly have ways to "get the word out" but I haven't looked into them yet.

A key factor in any pickleball tournament is the name and the logo artwork.  I would not recommend moving forward on planning an actual tournament unless and until a VERY catchy, unique name can be selected AND a likewise VERY catchy unique logo designed.

Pocatello is centrally located and should easily be able to fill a tournament of 50-100 people without breaking a sweat or worrying about advertising.

Prior to scheduling a tournament, a key aspect of planning is to select a weekend date when no one else nearby is running a tournament.  Typically, a tournament being held when there are no other tournaments scheduled will be easier to fill.

Pickleball Tournaments Dot Com

 As far as we can tell, almost everyone uses the Pickleball Tournaments website to do the front end registration for their tournament.  It removes  massive burden from tournament organizers, most of whom are volunteers or have other day jobs.

 If MEC organized a tournament with less than 100 players, the total fees would appear to be about $300 or roughly $3 a player.  Let's say the base registration fee was similar to the Senior Games, $25.  Even if ME didn't charge a "per event" extra fee, it would appear the net to MEC would be around $2200, before other expenses.

The main thing that ME would have to do would be to set up a dedicated PayPal account so registration fees could be credited to that account.

We will discuss more about this in subsequent posts here but at least this is enough to get you started.

pickleballtournaments.com