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.