Below is a basic diagram of the courts we currently have available, with courts 1-3 representing our primary courts and courts 4-8 representing where we set up our portable nets.
Challenge Court – Courts 1 & 6
The purpose of a challenge court is to:
Allow advanced players the opportunity to play competitive games.
Provide intermediate players the opportunity to step away from open play and test themselves.
Open Play Courts – Courts 2-5, 7-8
The purpose of open court play is to:
Play and socialize with ALL members of our Pickleball community
Provide a variety of mixed-skill level games, so that
Players with similar skill levels have opportunities for competitive games.
Players with less advanced skills have opportunities to challenge themselves against players with more advanced skills
Players with more advanced skills have opportunities to practice the soft game elements of pickleball (dinking, placement, soft third shots, soft blocking, etc…)
Challenge Court Rotation of Play Guidelines
Paddles must be queued up for play on the challenge court.
While the challenge court is intended for intermediate to advanced play, ANY player may elect to play on the challenge court, and no other player may discourage or restrict them from doing so.
Players electing to play on a challenge court should understand that all players on this court are expecting a challenging game and will not be expected to 'go easy' on anyone.
Teams stay together on this court.
No team or individual player plays more than two consecutive games on the challenge court.
When a games ends, the winning team stays on and stays together after their first win, and a new team comes in to challenge them. The second place finishers come off the court.
If a team wins a second consecutive game, then they exit the court as well as the second place finishers and 2 new teams come on.
Players are encouraged not to play exclusively on the challenge court. Our most advanced players should consider themselves ambassadors of the sport, and as such, are encouraged to play some games on the open play courts and to use those games to mix with other players and to practice aspects of their soft game.
Open Court Rotation of Play Guidelines
Paddles must be queued up for open play.
Two queues will be provided for the open play courts. The primary goal of having two queues is to better mix up players and prevent pairs coming off a court from potentially playing together over and over.
Standard play rotation is “2 out, 2 in”; once 10 or more paddles are in queue, rotation will be “4 out, 4 in”.
Under “2 out, 2 in”, when a games ends, the winners stay on and split up. The second place finishers come off the court and split their paddles into the two queues provided.
Under “4 out, 4 in”, when a games ends, all 4 players come off the court and both teams split their paddles into the two queues provided.
Rotation into the next game is then done from one queue at a time, using a physical marker to identify which queue is up next.
When players are called into a game, one of them should move the marker to the other queue to indicate that that queue is now up next.