Pickleball club gearing up to host provincials

By JAMES TUBB on July 6, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

Medicine Hat’s pickleball courts will soon be full of provincials action.

The City of Medicine Hat and the MedHat Pickleball Club are gearing up to host the provincial pickleball tournament this weekend at the new 20-court facility at the Big Marble Go Centre.

Tournament director Brenda Lea MacPhail was excited for the tournament when speaking to the News.

“We are over the moon excited to be able to host the 2022 Pickleball Alberta provincial championships,” she said. “It’s something the club has always talked about and now that we have the facility to be able to host it, it truly is a dream come true.”

The three-day event will welcome around 440 athletes from across the province and will serve as the inaugural closed provincial tournament in Canada. Only Albertans will be able two compete and win, something MacPhail said organizers are proud of.

“I think it truly is a feather in our cap as a club, and certainly for Pickleball Alberta to be able to achieve this,” MacPhail said. “It’s not done anywhere else in Canada at this point in time and it was a bit of a risk, saying that we only wanted players from Alberta. But at the end of the day, the players stepped up and they’re willing to come to Medicine Hat and be part of this.”

She said the first gold medal awarded Friday, the first day of the tournament, will carry a legacy for the winner and the club as being the first, true provincial winner.

MacPhail said they are excited to be able to show off the city’s new outdoor facilities to everyone in attendance.

“There are lots of indoor facilities that have 20 courts and all of the kinds of things that we do, but not a lot of outdoor ones,” MacPhail said. “We have a championship court, which makes us stand out from a lot of other facilities around the country, and the fact that all of our courts are wind screened, they have acoustic fence, and we have fences between all the courts, as well as wind mitigation within the courts. It really does make them stand out above the rest.”

MacPhail said she’s also excited for the economic boost the city’s businesses will receive.

“Especially when we’ve been going through difficult times with COVID, we’re really hoping people who come to Medicine Hat will want to partake in a lot of the tourist activities that are going on – they will go eat in restaurants, they will support the food trucks that are there here locally – they’re just going to spend some money in our community,” MacPhail said. “That’s critical to the success of any city, is to have events like this that can continue to support them.”

The tournament kicks off Friday with women’s doubles and men’s singles action. Saturday is all mixed doubles and Sunday, the final day of pickleball action, contains men’s doubles and women’s singles. MacPhail says the brackets for each division are broken down by skill rankings from 3.0 and under to 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, open and then the top ranked players. It’s further broken down by age in order to keep competition fair.

She says all are welcome to watch the action this weekend but they ask that fans don’t have pets with them or bring any lawn-chairs into the courts as there will be seating provided.

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