Have you ever had to travel a long distance to play pickleball, and wished that there was somewhere closer to home? Perhaps you’ve moved to a new area, and there’s no pickleball club anywhere nearby.
If you should find yourself in these situations, you may want to start your own pickleball club.
It is difficult to know where to begin, so we spoke to two people we’ve asked two people who have been there and done it.
With the sport experiencing such a rapid boom, there’s never been a better time to get involved, so if you’ve caught the pickleball bug, here’s five tips to help you get a club going, and how to make it a success:
Tell your friends!
Louise Stephens helped to set up London Pickleball, a club which now boasts over 400 members. “The biggest thing for me was getting the players,” she states. “People always say I want to play, but where do I get players?
“So I just contacted a lot of my friends… and that is literally how we started, it was just my friends. But all my friends, remarkably, have friends, so they were then bringing their friends and before you know it, you’ve got a big group of people wanting to play.”
Remember, pickleball’s greatest strength is its diversity, so you can bring almost anybody down to a session and they will be able to participate, often to a much greater extent than with any other sport.
Don’t be afraid to ask other, established pickleball clubs for help
Richard Wise runs taster sessions and supports new clubs across Cumbria: “I now just run the taster session, loan the equipment and support them for a few months until they’re up and running with their own gear and then I’ll get my gear back and they’ll carry on”.
Louise offers similar advice: “Don’t be afraid to ask established groups, because people are more than happy to tell you what they did.
“And you don’t have to take any notice of what they say, you can pick and choose the bits you like, but just remember that is somebody’s been running a pickleball group for six or seven years, they’ve been through everything you’re about to go through.”
If you find a venue with some availability, take it immediately
Even for the most established clubs, finding a place to play can be tricky. If you know of a venue, the advice would be to book it as soon as possible and just get playing, or you may find everywhere booked up and have nowhere to play.
Louise knows this all too well, having struggled initially to find a venue after running her first taster session.
“We literally rang round local leisure centres and took what we were offered. Since [the start] if anyone offers us anything, we take it,” she said.
Richard is also struggling. “Despite the fact we’ve got 80 odd hours a week going on, I’ve still not got space for people to play,” he said.
Your members will have skills that help you run the club. Use them!
You may wonder how on earth you’ll be able to manage an entire club of people as it begins to grow, but the beauty of pickleball is the community you can create, and if you create a positive, welcoming environment, members will want to help the club in any way they can.
London Pickleball is a great example of this, with Louise noting: “Just in the pickleball community, there’s some amazing people that you would never know how amazing they are unless you ask for help.
“So that would be my biggest thing, being brave enough to ask for help.”
Be brave enough to do what’s best for the club as a whole
This may seem a little bit further down the road, but it is something you should be aware of if you’re looking to start up and run a club.
People of varying skill levels will be playing, and striking a balance between inclusion and enjoyment is always likely to be tricky.
Louise has been involved in the founding and running of two pickleball clubs across the last seven years, and for her, the number one problem pickleball clubs face is this:
“When people start settling down, there’s always people who think they’re better than they are, and they want to play with the better players. But those better players don’t want to play with them.
“You have to be brave enough to stand up and say to that person, sorry you’re not ready. That’s the hardest thing, because no one wants to upset anybody, but if you don’t upset the minority, you’ll upset the majority”
