Pickleball comes in all colours!
Saturday, August 19, 2023

4th annual event on tap with a new look format and a new look organizing committee, adding Anika Terton into the mix to whip those lazy boys into action. Our day started earlier than usual and fell to an alternate location, at idealistic Robert Burnaby Park (instead of the jam packed Cariboo Hill) which turned out to be a great day at a great venue.

The singles mini-event kicked things off with an ATH participating 12 players (!), each getting 6 matches of mortal combat action to get our hearts racing (but no worries, we had a defibrillator on site!). After the dust settled, Donald Chin emerged the victor with a dominating 5-1 record and a single point giving him the tie breaking nod over Jack Jay and Jason Lai sporting identical W/L records. Congratulations Don!

The inaugural pickleball skills competition was introduced during the lunch intermission, with 3 separate events of three shots each, to hit serving, dinking and driving targets. Thanks to some quality passes from that master driller Steve Ko, serving up the muffins to 16 suitors, it was Jason Lai, Chad Egeland and Greg Lulashnyk shaking out the field to take top honours.

Onto doubles action with a new 2-pool seeding format retaining traditional scoring vs. last year’s rally point system (resulting in less prelim games but also a more relaxed pace to enjoy the day too). Team Body Shots (Dharmesh / Don) kept to their namesake as they swept the prelim rounds and notched a few bodybags to their delight, while on the other end, the spousal duo of The Dinkaholics (Chris / Caroline) may have been on the juice already as they went winless in the same pool, unfortunately for them.

In the alternate group, Team Jack and Not Diane (Jack / Ed) took the top seed by virtue of a 2-1 record and a tie breaking nod over Team Orange Crush (Sherman / Christina) but they may have peaked too early as they were eliminated in the medal round, losers’ side, semi-final at the hands of Ed's spouse from Team We Like to Eat It! (Evelyn / Jason) in a close 12-10 nailbiter, who then went onto capture bronze in the consolation final over the White Out Warriors (Anika / Henry) in a battle of box league partners.

Meanwhile, the only other all-spouse duo, Team Pop It 2 Me (Vince / Cindy) went 0-2 in the medal round so they may have had a few matters to discuss on the ride home together, likely not about new developments in dentistry.

The main attraction of the day was that sexy hot pink alpha pair, The Handicaps (Greg / Chad) who overcame their assigned (2 point) handicap all tourney long to topple the Body Shots 15-8 in the championship final, as they avenged their prelim loss to them earlier... taking the title, trophy, and year long bragging rights that come with it. Congratulations Chad and Greg!

Fun times on a day with fun prizes, food, drink, and GCs to winners and random recipients. Also nice to see some fans with their entourage come out too (Bree, Terry, Amy, Liv, etc). The organizing committee (Anika, Dharmesh and Jason) thank everyone for their participation and hope you had a great time! Until next year…

(click photos to enlarge in new tab)