Join us on Saturday, November 13, 2021, at Newtown Estates Park in Sarasota for our inaugural Sertoma Kids’ Pickleball Fest! Space is limited to the first 64 registered players, so don’t wait! There are GREAT prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners in each skill level, plus lots of free gifts and giveaways for ALL participants. Continental breakfast and after-party are included as well. Register today atsertomakids.org/pickleball.
Only 64 players. Filling up fast.
What is Sertoma Kids, LLC?
It is a non-profit that provides speech therapy for children who may not be able to afford services. Many of the children have autism or disabilities.
How did Pickleball Terry become involved with this tournament?
I was sent an invite for lunch at Lauren Johnson’s house for the first brain-storming meeting for the possibility to host a tournament as a fundraiser. Lauren and most of the other women at the meeting, were avid pickleball players, and I recognized them from playing on the courts. Great ideas were tossed around as we ate lunch, and the Sertoma Kids’ Pickleball Fest was born.
Where it began
Now moths later, they have already secured sponsors, and joined up with the Flanzer Foundation that will match all funds that are taken in for this great tournament.
Louis & Gloria Flanzer The mission of the Flanzer Philanthropic Trust is to enhance the life of the people of the Suncoast through social services and healthcare initiatives
If you would like to be a sponsor for the Sertoma Kids Pickleball Fest, here are more details. Click Here.
What is the tournament format?
It is a fun round robin. You do not need to sign up with a partner, and will play with other liked skilled players. The winners from each skill level will compete with each other for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. They will receive great prizes!!!
Each person is guaranteed 6 games.
What else will be there?
It’s a festival… a pickleball festival! The Toasted Mango is providing breakfast to all tournament participants, the Surly Mermaid is providing lunch. All FREE for tournament participants! If you bring guests, they may purchase food from the vendors.
Silent Auction
Themed gift baskets and other surprises will be auctioned off.
MUSIC! DANCING! MUSIC! DANCING!
Do not miss out on the fun. Spots are filling up fast! Max 64 players.
How do you sign up?
Go here and sign up. NOTE: And this is important. When you sign-up, you will be directed to the Flanzer Foundation site. There is a drop down tab and you will have to filter through many non-profits. Make sure you select SERATOMA KIDS. That way you will get credit and be officially signed up for the tournament. If you have any questions. please email Lauren Johnson at johnsonlauren642@icloud.com.
Lauren Johnson. Lauren is a recent retiree from the Sarasota County School District, having taught kindergarten through second grade for 44 wonderful years. She earned her master’s degree from USF in Gifted Education and was most passionate about gifted education and the sensory needs of gifted children. She also helped begin the first chartered middle school, Sarasota School for the Arts and Sciences, in Sarasota and worked tirelessly on that board of directors for three years. Lauren has been recognized for her accomplishments with children and the arts, being named Teacher of the Year at Fruitville Elementary School and Florida Studio Theatre’s Teacher of the Year. Now, she is loving retirement with her husband, Mark, and taking the time to frequently see their grandchildren. Playing pickleball, learning golf, biking, kayaking and recently joining the Sertoma Kids Board of Directors has kept Lauren quite active in the community.
The USA Pickleball Rule Committee has recently posted the PROPOSED rule additions/changes for 2022. There are 71 . Some are controversial, and many are clarifications to existing rules.
The ones I feel are most interesting are as follows.
Keep the Drop Serve
The Drop Serve requirement to drop the ball is designed to control the ball from bouncing above the server’s waist so that an underhand/upward arc serve is automatically made. However, the restrictions imposed relating to releasing the ball at a natural height and without additional force have been difficult for referees to judge and to judge consistently. The procedure could be greatly simplified by allowing the server to release the ball in any manner and merely requiring the ball to be hit when it is no higher than the server’s waist, as is done with the traditional serve. Players could then bounce or toss the ball when making a Drop Serve and there would be no need to try to judge whether a player moved his/her hand or jumped a fraction of an inch or imparted force on the ball. Hitting the ball at or below waist level guarantees that the serve is made with an underhand motion/upward arc by most people except those who are really tall.
First serving team gets 2 serves
Doubles. Both players on a team will serve before a side out is declared.
Maintain Serving Order throughout Game
The serving order remains the same throughout each game such that server 1 for each team is the first to serve the ball after each side out followed by server 2 from that team.
Change back to 0 0 Start and discontinuance of drop serve
1 Return the first score to 0 0 Start
2 Discontinue the provisional Drop Serve
No spin on the serve
“At the start of the service motion the ball must be held in the palm of the hand and released either by tossing the ball up from the palm or rotating the hand until the ball is released. If the server is unable to hold the ball in the palm, then the toss of the ball should be done with a minimum of spin applied to the ball.”
Reinstate let serves
4.O Service Lets. There is no limit to the number of lets a server may serve. The serve is a let and will be replayed if:
4.O.1. The serve touches the net, strap, or band and is otherwise good and lands in the service court.
4.O.2. The referee calls a service let.
4.O.3. Any player calls a service let. If the referee determines that a service let called by a player did not occur, a fault will be declared against the offending player.
Rally-point scoring
Doubles. One player on a team will serve before a side out is declared. A side out will occur once a rally is lost or a fault is committed by the serving team and service is awarded to the opposing team.
Since pickleball was originally developed based on a badminton court and some of the badminton rules, you would expect that rally-point scoring would have been implemented in pickleball back when it was implemented for badminton is 2006. (Volleyball implemented rally-point scoring in 1999).
Pickleball remains the only racquet/net sport that has not permanently implemented a rally-point scoring system!
What is rally-point scoring?
The difference between (traditional) side-out scoring and rally-point scoring is that in rally-point scoring a point is awarded after every rally, regardless of which side served.
This means that the non-serving side is also able to score points.
Unlike side-out scoring where the serve goes from server one to server two and then to the opposing team, in rally scoring, it only goes through one server before going to the opposing team.
As a result, the server number is not called out since there is only one server.
Server will serve from the side appropriate to their score, i.e. if their score is even the serve will be from the right-hand side, if odd from the left-hand side.
Allow a second serve
4.0 If a player faults on a serve due to a service motion fault, foot fault, or because the ball does not land in the service court, they get a second attempt before the serve is transferred to their partner or opponent(s).
Remove COVID/carry serve
A player deliberately carrying or catching the ball on the paddle while the ball is live/in-play
(From the USA Pickleball website.)
NEW 2022 RULEBOOK REVISION PROCESS
The improved 2022 Rulebook Revision process has begun. We do not expect the 2022 Rulebook to have the extent of change seen in 2021. The window for public input into suggested rulebook revisions is open in accordance with the overall process described below.
What follows is significantly different than last year. Changes were made in response to USA Pickleball member comments and after benchmarking other sport Rulebook processes. We trust that you will see greater transparency, public input and comment opportunities in what follows below. Ambassadors are welcome to share the process below with fellow USA Pickleball members.
Any USA Pickleball member wishing to suggest a modification to the 2022 Rulebook is welcome to submit changes by visiting https://rules.usapickleball.org
Background and Purpose: The process outlined below will be used for the 2022 Rulebook revision. The process addresses the need for improved transparency and greater opportunities for player input and comment. In addition, it formalizes the International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) involvement in rule creation and approval.
The steps below are designed to result in an effective date of January 1, 2022 for the new Rulebook and Change Document.
Public Input Opportunity. The window for public input for potential Rulebook changes is now open and will end on June 10. Each idea submitted will have a tracking number assigned that will not change throughout the process so interested parties can follow or track a particular idea through the process.
Public Comment Opportunity. Rulebook submissions will be listed (without attribution) on the USA Pickleball website for public comment. If desired, the IFP President may elect to do the same with the IFP website. The ideas will be posted no later than June 15. This will open up a two-week public comment period.
Public Review Opportunity. On or before June 30, the USA Pickleball Rules Submission Coordinator will transmit the list of ideas and all public comments collected to the IFP Rules Committee Co-Chairmen. The IFP Rules Committee Co-Chairmen will add any comments collected from the IFP website public comment period. The complete list will be posted on the USA Pickleball website. If desired, the IFP President may elect to do the same with the IFP website.
The IFP Rules Committee, under the leadership of the IFP Rules Committee Co-Chairmen, and with the advice and counsel of the USA Pickleball Rules Committee Recording Secretary (if needed), will consider each of the ideas on their merits by voting. Each IFP Committee member will vote independently of one another. The vote will be on a 1-10 scale with 10 the highest score, meaning the person voting thinks that idea should be adopted without reservation. There is no relative ranking among the ideas. After voting, the IFP Rules Committee members will have an opportunity to discuss their votes with other members of the IFP Rules Committee in one or more conference calls arranged by the IFP Rules Committee Co-Chairmen. The need for the conference call(s) is at the discretion of the IFP Rules Committee Co-Chairmen. All rule ideas with a combined average score of 5 or more is considered IFP Rules Committee-approved.
The IFP Rules Committee will complete their deliberations and voting by August 15.
Transparency of Results. The results of the IFP Rules Committee voting and the status of all Rule ideas submitted to the IFP Rules Committee is planned to be shared on the USA Pickleball website no later than August 20. If desired, the IFP President may elect to do the same with the IFP website.
The Rules Revision Committee begins writing rules for those ideas with an IFP Rules Committee combined average voting score of 5 or more. Note: Some ideas are submitted already written in ‘rules language’. Those typically don’t require much work. Most submissions, however, require significant attention to get them in the required format and ‘rules language’.
Each rule idea with a combined average voting score of 5 or more will also be entered into the Change Document. The Change Document will include the reason for each rule change idea. Note: that at this point every rule idea has been subject to either public input and/or comment.
Transparency of Results. The Rules Revision Committee finishes rule writing and the Change Document by September 15. Once finished, all the written IFP Rules Committee-approved rules (with corresponding tracking number), all the rule change ideas with less than a combined score of 5, and the Change Document are forwarded to the USA Pickleball Rules Committee and posted on the USA Pickleball webpage.
Transparency of Results. The USA Pickleball Rules Committee meets to vote on each IFP Rules Committee-approved rule. Each rule is voted on separately in the meeting. A rule is approved by a simple majority of the 5 members. The vote is recorded. After the meeting, the voting results will be posted on the USA Pickleball website.
Transparency of Results. All the written IFP Rules Committee-approved rules (with corresponding tracking number), the rule change ideas with less than a combined score of 5, the Change Document and the results of the USA Pickleball Rules Committee voting are forwarded to the USA Board of Directors for final approval. The USA Pickleball Board of Directors voting results will be posted on the USA Pickleball website.
Public Comment Opportunity/Transparency of Results. The Rulebook is proofed and published to the USA Pickleball website by December 1. That action starts a 30-day clock where the public can comment on any obvious errors in the draft. This public comment period normally ‘finds’ a small number of errors of omission and it allows players time to get familiar with the changes before the official effective date. The USA Pickleball Rules Committee Chairman can approve changes needed to correct errors that don’t change the intent of the rule. Any changes needed that change the intent of a rule must be approved by the USA Pickleball Rules Committee and Board. The outcome of any such voting will be posted to the USA Pickleball website.
Again, this is just under review and most will not make it into the official rules, so review and let me know what you think by commenting below.
The serve has been controversial since the drop serve was introduced in January 2021. Then Zane came up with the COVID serve, also know as the chainsaw serve…or the Zane serve. Now that tournaments are beginning to outlaw the drop serve, the questions is…will the only serve allowed in 2022 be the standard and back to basics, underhand serve.
Here is a post I saw on Facebook and Morgan makes a good point.
Dear Rules Committee
Soon you will be asked to vote on a proposed rule change that will ban some or all techniques that create additional spin on the serve. As founder of one such technique in question, I believe I am entitled to offer an opinion.
What’s primarily in question is whether or not offensive serves are in the spirit of the game. It’s been 3 years since I started imparting spin on the ball toss, however only recently has the style gained notoriety, largely due to the creative adaptation from fellow pro player, Zane Navratil, that incorporates the use of the paddle and/or the paddle hand to provide a kind of pre-spin on the ball toss.
Allow me to wind back the clock for a moment. One day in the late 90’s Levon Major hopped the kitchen line, hit a volley and won the point. Soon Erne Perry performed the same move in a tournament, and the Erne was born. When opposite Tyler Loong, we all fear the repercussions of an errant dink, and I wouldn’t have it any other way because without the threat of the Erne, players wouldn’t have learned how to defend against them. Moves and counter moves. Levon and Erne changed the game.
The game grew.
Pickleball was born in the mid-sixties. You know what else started around then…The Alley Oop. The wild new way to score hit the big time with Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain leading the charge. The technique is still used today but we don’t see it 10 times a game. Why? because teams learned how to defend against it.
The game grew.
In 2016 Marcin Rozpedski and myself invented the shake and bake. We were being out-dinked at the Le Master Davison classic and we needed a solution. After a couple of bottles of 5 Hour Energy we patented the new style of attack. In the following years hundreds of players had to deal with Marcin crashing the line and poaching with deadly intent. You know what those opponents did? They got better. Returns got deeper, players reacted faster, hit sharper volleys and successfully learnt how to defend against the attack.
The game grew.
The return of serve is a skill and I believe we will stifle the development of that skill by taking away the most challenging serves. Necessity is the father of invention. These creative serves force players to improve their return of serve skill. Dekel Bar can hit a serve faster than most people can pitch a baseball, and his opponents have had to learn how to return it. Power is a skill. Spinning a ball is a skill. Accuracy is a skill. No one has ever been told that a ball toss can’t be a skill. Not one Referee has ever given me so much as a warning. I’m not 220lbs with the power of an Israeli Demi-god, but I’m good with my hands so that’s what I use in order to compete in a rapidly deepening field. I believe that if the technique used is within the rules of the game, what difference should it make which skill is employed to make a serve better? If you ban one skill that makes a serve more offensive, under the pretense that the game wasn’t intended to have offensive serves, doesn’t it then stand to reason that you must ban any kind of offensive serve. Who wants to go down that road? There would be no serves with power, accuracy, or spin. That doesn’t sound too fun does it?
Imagine baseball without the curveballs, imagine tennis without the kick serve, basketball without the Alley-Oop.
What if a technique was developed under the full rules of the game, that allowed a player to serve at full speed with laser-like accuracy. I imagine it would be very effective. Should we take that technique away from the game?
What do we all get asked? When is the sport going to be in the olympics? Well, I would argue an offensive sport is more popular and much more marketable than a defensive one. People don’t clammer to see Mayweather just duck and weave for 12 rounds, and people aren’t on eBay buying tickets to the next NBA Rebound Championships.
Let’s imagine this scenario. It’s the year 2032. We finally have flying cars but the number one cause of death is…. flying cars. Pickleball is alive and well. 95% percent of professional pickleball players have either played ATP/WTA tennis or have been pro pickleball players for 10 + years. Ben Johns is approaching his mid 30’s but still looks 18. The best players are making $100K plus and the mainstream media is embracing the sport. A scrappy but adorable young Australian washes ashore, starts playing the game and develops a new way to serve, well within the rules of the game. During tournaments, the serve is used and returned by essentially everyone who meets it. It’s 2032 and the level of skill required to return the serve is possessed by all but a few. The game grew. In this scenario, would we need to ban the serve? No. It would only be seen as innovation because there is no downside. It looks different, makes the game more interesting and only slightly more challenging.
Now let’s consider another scenario. The year is once again 2032. It’s the 10yr anniversary of an important moment in the history of the game. The day the rules committee agreed to continue to allow a one handed ball toss to impart spin. In the years after the serve was born, players adapted their return technique and developed their skills to meet the demands.
The game grew.
I don’t think the problem is that the serve is not in the spirit of the game. It just came along too soon. If this serve was born 10 yrs from now, the spirit of the game wouldn’t be affected because everyone would be able to return it. I think this is a classic chicken and the egg scenario. Let’s not kill the egg before we meet the chicken.
What’s being deemed as not in the spirit of the game is being labeled so not because of the action, but by the reaction. Not by the serve, but by the return. I present to you that it’s too early to understand the reaction. I can also attest that the chief proponents of this serve, myself and Zane Navratil, both report the same thing, the players that have the most experience returning these serves, don’t have any problems getting the return in. It’s not a matter of IF players will be able to effectively return the serves, it’s just a matter of WHEN.
Each and every year the bar is raised. There are moments. People, Shots. Plays that never were, are suddenly born and once again the game grows.
This is one of those moments.
I ask you kindly to allow the game to grow once more.
As of today (8/04/21), I am no longer an USA Pickleball Ambassador. (I loved being a USA Pickleball Ambassador.) Why? I received a call from a director of the Florida USA ambassadors last night, and he informed me that USA Pickleball Org had received a communication from a fellow player in Sarasota complaining that they were not being treated fairly by Pickleball Terry. I thought the complaints were rather silly…she drops peopleoff her email list… she won’t post our pictures…things of that sort. First of all, my weekly emails have nothing to do with the USA Pickleball Org, but I agree that an ambassador should keep things separate. For example, don’t mix being a paddle dealer with I’m a USA Pickleball Ambassador. USA Pickleball has a strict rule about that. Now I know.
So that there is no more confusion, and so that I am able to carry on without worrying that someone is going to go over my head and complain to my “boss,” I decided to leave on a high note. That way I won’t be responsible for doing anything wrong in conjunction with USA Pickleball. (Being an ambassador is a volunteer position.)
USA Pickleball Organization is a great resource, and I recommend all pickleball players to become a member. Their website is full of wonderful information, and I enjoyed my time as an USA Pickleball Ambassador, but it’s time to move on. Maybe that guy who complained about me would like to pick up the torch and become an ambassador? No hard feelings. People have to do what they have to do.
My new title is (Self-appointed) Sarasota Pickleball Representative.
Thanks for reading,
Pickleball Terry and Zane
Pickleball Terry
Terry Ryan
Owner of Sarasotapickleball.com
Dinkpickleball@gmail.com
Lauren Johnson. Lauren is a recent retiree from the Sarasota County School District, having taught kindergarten through second grade for 44 wonderful years. She earned her master’s degree from USF in Gifted Education and was most passionate about gifted education and the sensory needs of gifted children. She also helped begin the first chartered middle school, Sarasota School for the Arts and Sciences, in Sarasota and worked tirelessly on that board of directors for three years. Lauren has been recognized for her accomplishments with children and the arts, being named Teacher of the Year at Fruitville Elementary School and Florida Studio Theatre’s Teacher of the Year. Now, she is loving retirement with her husband, Mark, and taking the time to frequently see their grandchildren. Playing pickleball, learning golf, biking, kayaking and recently joining the Sertoma Kids Board of Directors has kept Lauren quite active in the community.
