TOURNAMENT
PLANNING
Are you considering hosting a
tournament, but you aren’t sure how
to get started? Tournaments are fun,
exciting and food for our competitive
souls. However it requires considerable
planning and preparation to run a great
tournament!!
Here are some tips we’ve learned over
the years that will help you begin to plan
and prepare:
• Plan early (how early depends on size
of tournament: one year recommended
for large tournaments).
• Understand your financials.
• Identify a venue.
• Know your venue.
• Know your sanctioning requirements
(if sanctioning).
• Know your demographic.
• Know what tools you’ll need to help
manage your tournament.
• Set your dates.
• Knowing your venue and how you
will operate within your venue is very
important in putting together your
tournament.
• The number of court hours you have
and number of days you have will
influence the number of events you can
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offer, the number of entrants you can
accept and is significant to putting your
play schedule together.
We can’t stress enough the importance
of understanding your venue.
Understanding your venue will help
you properly define, structure and
schedule your tournament such that
the staff, volunteers, players and
spectators have a positive experience.
Form a committee.
Select a Tournament Director.
Define roles/responsibilities. This
includes identifying volunteers
required to support the tournament,
identifying the roles the volunteers
will play and determining training
needs for all involved in supporting or
operating a tournament.
The volunteers are the backbone of all
tournaments and without them there
would be no tournaments.
The Tournament Director has overall
responsibility for all aspects of the
tournament.
The Tournament Director should set
direction and collaborate with the
committee on a regular basis to ensure
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all are prepared and the tournament is
set up for success.
• Get the word out. There are several
websites, Facebook pages and other
social media outlets that will help
you get the word out about your
tournament.
• Lastly, have fun. A lot of work
goes into putting on a successful
tournament, so don’t forget to have
fun along the way! Your hard work
will give back to you in ways you never
imagined!
Please understand these tips just
scratch the surface in tournament
planning, so if you need more
information please send an email to:
[email protected]. •
Melissa is an experienced
tournament operations
manager, with 2 years of
experience running large
pickleball tournaments
and consulting with
Tournament Directors all
over the world. She has
20 years of Information
Technology experience
working for large
corporations such as EDS
and Hewlett Packard and is a veteran of the United
States Navy. Melissa is currently a consultant for
American Express.