Annual Meeting and Picnic

QUAD CITIES PICKLEBALL CLUB ANNUAL PICNIC AND MEETING

SUNDAY, SEPT. 25 3:00pm

Cindy Wiseman presented these remarks because our President, Steve Morrison, was sidelined with Covid.

 

·       Welcome everyone, and thanks for coming.
We extend a big thank you to Julie Miller and the Social Committee for putting on an extraordinary event.
We hope everyone realizes that just by attending this picnic you have received full value for your $15 annual membership!

·       Tournament
Before we summarize some of the activities the Club has undertaken in the past year we would like to recognize the terrific job that Yen Dao, Cindy Wiseman, and the rest of the tournament committee did in running an outstanding tournament last weekend.  There were about 400 participants, nearly double last year’s number.  The money that this tournament nets will be used for the benefit of all Club members in the year to come.
I hope you like the little gifts you got when you checked in today.  You can thank last year’s tournament committee for those.

The Past Year
Let’s quickly run through some of the highlights of the past year and recognize the people who made them happen:

1.  Memberships
As usual, Annie Edwards has been working hard behind the scenes to keep our membership roster up to date and send countless communications out to our members.
We currently have between 500 and 600 members.  It’s hard to get closer than that because there are about 150 people whose memberships are due this month and who have not rejoined yet.  We expect that most of them will.

2.   Court Amenities
This past year the Club took a very proactive approach to helping out our various locations with whatever they needed to improve conditions.  We spent more than $6000 on anything from windscreens to nets to squeegees and ball holders, for ten different locations.
We plan to take the same approach in the next year.

Thanks to Gina DeWulf for coordinating that whole effort.  And thanks to all the Court Ambassadors who worked with her on this project.

3.  We have also bought 2000 pickleballs at discounted prices and resold them at cost, saving our members over $3000 compared to retail rates.  In fact, if you bought as few as nine balls from the Club you already paid for your annual membership.
We’ll continue buying them as long as you keep breaking them.

We have just about sold out of the last batch but another 500 balls were ordered the other day and should be available very soon.

4.  Training:

Ruth Senneff and Sharon Walters between them taught just over 150 new pickleball players how to get started with the game.

By the end of next week Steve Ebner will have coordinated six advanced clinics, teaching about 96 people in 3-day, 2-hour clinics.

Ruth’s Youth Committee put over 150 of the area’s young people through basic pickleball training, tournaments, and a lot of good times in eight different communities.

5.  Social Events

Julie Miller’s Social Committee organized numerous fun events for us in the past year, including a beautiful Christmas party, a night out with the River Bandits, two Dinks and Drinks sessions, free donut distributions, and, of course, this picnic.

6.  Media:

First, we have a beautiful new logo.  This was created by a consultant in a project led by Ruth Senneff.

Then, our new website.  We felt this was necessary not because the previous website was bad but because it was so difficult to update.  We wanted to move to a new platform to make it easier to keep it updated and current for all of you.  I hope you’ve all had a chance to look at it.  If you haven’t, please do so and we’d love to get any feedback you’d like to offer.  I’m particularly pleased with the map-based approach to finding out where our playing locations are.

Thanks to Kate Parr, Chris Rodrigues, and Anne Colville for helping lead that effort.

Third, because of our new logo of course we had to have new merchandise.  Thanks to Judy Peterson, Cindy Wiseman, and Dave Langrock we have a shop full of new shirts, hats, and visors, not to mention bag tags and koozies for sale at very reasonable prices. If you haven’t checked those out yet, you can do so here today, or check on the website at any time.

7.   Changes to Playing Locations

a.      The Tennis Club has created eight permanent indoor pickleball courts.

b.     Sheridan Meadows was resurfaced

c.      Six new courts in Muscatine are almost finished

d.     Unfortunately it looks as if we’ll be losing the Life Fitness Center

Sometime in 2023, we hope to see:

e.     Kiwanis resurfaced

f.       Mel McKay resurfaced and possibly expanded

8.   Presentation to Ruth Senneff
We are very sorry to be losing Ruth Senneff to another town.  She has been involved with the Club from its very outset, has been on the Board, has taught hundreds of new players through the Pb101 program, and has been the driving force behind a dynamic and growing youth training program for many years.  We can only hope to keep these things going when she is gone.

As a small token of our appreciation and thanks for all she has done the QC Pickleball Community is pleased to provide Ruth with a gift certificate to a garden shop in Ankeny to help her start developing the yard and garden in her new home.  If you didn’t already know, another of Ruth’s passions is gardening and we understand she will have plenty of that to do in her new home.

Some of her pickleball friends have donated money as well, and we are simply passing that on to Ruth to use as she develops a new youth training program in her new community.

9.  Thanks to the outgoing Board members
a.      Scott Campbell VP
b.     Laurie Ochs, Treasurer
c.      Ruth Senneff, At Large
d.     Cindy Wiseman, At Large
e.     Tim Harty, At Large

10.  Your 2022-23 Board
Incumbents:  Steve Morrison, President; one more year
                          Calvin Moss, Secretary; one more year

New Nominees:
Gina DeWulf, Vice President; two years
Frank Ludgate, Treasurer; two years

Five At-Large Candidates:
Brad Dye, continuing for one more year
Sue Erickson,
Carolyn Hingst
Christine Rodrigues
Terry Wangler

Please contact any of these Board members with suggestions for making our Club even better.

11.  You can see that we’ve had a busy year as a Board and as a Club.  More importantly, we hope you’ve all had a good year of playing and mostly having fun.  We are seeing that pickleball is evolving, not only in terms of playing styles, but also because of the pressure on the courts caused by the explosive growth in new players.  We are lucky in this area to have so many choices of places to play.  However, we know it is more difficult now for newer players to always find a place where they feel comfortable playing at their level.
One of the challenges we face as a Club and a community is to find ways to continue to make everyone feel welcome and to look for approaches that allow players of different skill levels to fit in.
So let’s all be aware of that and do everything we can to help make all players feel welcome, regardless of ability and  experience.

Thanks again to Julie Miller and the Social Committee for organizing this great event.

Upcoming QC Classic

Don’t forget to register for the QC Classic on September 16-18! We have a lot of great events! Registration link: https://www.pickleballtournaments.com/tournamentinfo.pl?tid=6283#menuInformation. Thank you to the amazing sponsors and donors to allow us to have door prizes and raffles.

Youth Classic: Friday, September 16 at 5:15pm: $20 to participate and our youth will not need to find a partner. This is doubles. Please encourage your young family members (10-17 year olds) to sign up for this fun event where we will give out medals for three separate age divisions and lots of fun giveaways. They can sign up via pickleballtournaments.com or via email (rsenneff@mchsi.com) by providing full name, email, phone number, age as of December 31, 2022.

2.5, 3.0, 3.5 18+, 50+, and 65+ skill levels for Medals: Saturday, September 17th and Sunday, September 18th starting at 8:30am: $40 to register and $5 per event fee. Gender doubles will occur on Saturday and Mixed doubles and singles will be back to back on Sunday. Top three will earn medals and you are guaranteed 6 games.

4.0 60+ Skill Level for Medals: Saturday, September 17th and Sunday, September 18th starting at 8:30am: $40 to register and $5 per event fee. Gender doubles will occur on Saturday and Mixed doubles and singles are back to back on Sunday. Top three will earn medals and you are guaranteed 6 games.

4.0, 4.5, and 5.0 Skill Only for Cash Prizes: Saturday, September 17th and Sunday, September 18th starting at 8:30am: $40 to register and $20 per event fee. Gender doubles and mixed doubles are back to back on Saturday and Singles are on Sunday. Top three will earn cash prizes and you are guaranteed 6 games. Cash prizes are determined by total number of registrations and sponsorship dollars collected.

Volunteer: Looking to volunteer but haven’t signed up yet? Fill out this form by August 15th: https://forms.gle/6PHS1cFJM38Jy3wu7.

Tournament Dri Fit Shirt: Would you like to order a tournament shirt? They are $18 a piece. Fill out this form and pay by August 15th to get a shirt: https://forms.gle/837JypWmBBW4UddQ7

Deb Menke Inducted into the QC Sports Hall of Fame!

One of our local PB players, Deb Menke, was honored last month as a new member of the Quad City Sports Hall of Fame!

The Quad City Sports Hall of Fame is for anyone within the quad cities that have made significant contributions to sports. Deb Menke received the honor for her contributions as girls coach in basketball and volleyball at North Scott. She was also the first female athletic director in the Mississippi Athletic Conference at North Scott. She then was assistant VP at Pleasant Valley and then principal there.

You can find Deb on the courts at Sheridan Meadows or Beyond the Baseline. Please wish her congratulations!

You can read more about Deb in the article link below:

https://qctimes.com/sports/high-school/hall-of-fame-profile-menke-spent-a-career-assisting-others/article_d5b0aea2-5036-58e2-9ac7-1d1506871539.html

Update from Club President

Update from our club President

QUAD CITIES PICKLEBALL CLUB 

NEWS BULLETIN: APRIL 22, 2022 

I know most of you have been active during the winter and early spring seasons but, like me, you are looking forward to being outside again. 

The Club’s Board and Committee Leads have also been busy off the courts and we wanted to give all our Club members an update on what’s been done and on some of the things that are planned for the summer season. 

First, let’s talk about money!  

The Quad Cities Classic Tournament that was held last September was a great financial success. Thanks to Cindy Wiseman and her Tournament Committee for that! We decided that we should use this money to benefit as many Club members as possible. With that in mind, we started two initiatives: 

1. Court Enhancements: 

We gathered requests from all our Court Ambassadors (*) for anything they felt their playing location could use. Almost all the requests were approved, so most of our locations will be receiving something new as the outdoor season gets underway. These items range from squeegees, ball holders, and first aid kits to windscreens, leaf blowers, and shade structures.  Many thanks to Board Member Gina DeWulf for coordinating that whole effort for us. And thanks to our Treasurer, Laurie Ochs, for keeping such an eagle eye on our bank account. 

(*) The Court Ambassadors act as a liaison between the Board and all the players at their designated location. If you are not sure who the ambassador is for your location, ask other players or check the website in the “About” section. 

2. Social Events: 

We asked Julie Miller, the head of our Social Committee, to “kick it up a notch” with respect to social events for Club members. She and her committee have come up with a variety of great activities to make pickleball more fun than ever. These will include an event called “Dinks with Drinks”, a spring picnic, a party bus, donut days, the Rock Island Labor Day parade, and “Glow 

in-the-Dark” pickleball. You will soon see the details of her committee’s work posted on the website. 

And speaking of the website: 

We have plans to completely revamp our website to make it more informative and easier to use.  The website technology we have in place now is very cumbersome so we will be investing in an entirely new platform.

New Logo: 

The Board has been working with a local graphic designer, and the Club has a new logo. We hope to see it displayed on a variety of merchandise sometime this summer. The new logo is a tribute to our bi-state nature and our beautiful new bridge. 

Leagues and Ladders: 

Some of you may be wondering about leagues or ladders for the summer season. Unfortunately, we have not found anyone who is willing to coordinate this effort for the Club as a whole. However, if anyone out there would like to set up a league or ladder at your playing location, you can certainly do so, as long as you are respectful of other non-league players who want to use the courts. We highly encourage running leagues in the late afternoons or early evenings to avoid conflicts with the heavy drop-in use in the mornings, and recommend that you don’t use all of the available courts. If you would like to set up a league and aren’t sure how to go about it, please contact the Club and we will find someone to advise you. 

Tournament: 

Yen Dao has a strong committee working on the 2022 Quad Cities Classic Tournament, to be held from September 16 – 18. We expect this year’s tournament to be an even bigger event than last year’s and encourage any of you who are interested in participating in a first-class tournament to sign up. You can find more information under the Tournament tab on our website. 

Training: 

There are lots of plans for training for the outdoor season. 

Sharon Walters has already scheduled a Pickleball 101 Class at RIFAC on April 27 and 28, and Ruth Senneff will be leading the 101 Class at Kiwanis on May 9. 

These first classes are already full but keep an eye out for additional sessions later on. The classes are free for anyone and all equipment is supplied. 

Steve Ebner will be providing a number of more advanced clinics during the summer at various locations. The first session is already planned for the Geneseo courts. It will run for three days – May 9, 10, 11, from 10:30 am to 12:30pm. Steve will take up to 12 participants and the clinic is free for Club members. 

Registration is for Geneseo players only until May 1 and will be open to anyone if the clinic is not full at that time. 

If you would like to have an advanced clinic at your location, please work through your Court Ambassador, who will contact Steve Ebner.

Junior Events: 

Ruth Senneff is a victim of her own success over many years in running clinics and camps for junior players. This year the demand is exploding: there are camps and clinics planned in five cities this summer. There will also be a Youth event during the Quad Cities Classic Tournament. More information about all the youth events can be found on the website. 

With all the youth activities planned this year, the Juniors Committee would love to have more people volunteer to help with a clinic or camp. If you enjoy working with young people and would like to pass on your enthusiasm for the game, please contact Ruth. 

Hospitality: 

Mary Healy heads up our Hospitality Committee. They send cards to Club members who might be in need of a little pick-me-up. If you know a Club member who is recovering from an illness or operation, or has recently lost a loved one, please let Mary know. 

Discount Pickleballs: 

One last thing: perhaps not everyone knows yet that the Club buys Franklin pickleballs in large quantities so we can sell them to members at a discounted price: 3 for $5. If you would like some of these balls, please work through your Court Ambassador to coordinate the sale and delivery. 

That’s a brief summary of some Club happenings as we move into the outdoor season. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding what the Club is doing (or not doing) please send an email with your thoughts to qcpickleball@gmail.com. 

Steve Morrison, President


 

LET’S GET SOCIAL!