Independence Pickleball (IPBC)

TIMED PLAY for a traditional 11 pt game.

Objective: After a set amount of time all players will be rotating and/or splitting in some way at the SAME time..

Here's how it works..

We set the clock for 12 -15 Min.. This seems to be close to the average length of play per game (give or take).. with a 1-2 min break for water sip and switching courts.. The 12-15 minute time may change up or down.. We'll see how it goes this week and make adjustments as needed.

At the end of the time limit. WHISTLE...

Winners stay and split while losers move to next court or to a BYE on the sidelines. And so forth...when the next game is finished winners stay and losers rotate to the next court or BYE and repeat..I hope to have you play a minimum of two games in a row and then a bye game but we'll see what happens..

All games end at the same time NO MATTER what the score is.. If you win by 1 .. or if You lose by 1.. Move on!

If an 11 point game ends prior to the timed session.. your group can continue play in two ways...

1. Restart a new 11 pt game until time ends and keep the same partners or

2. Just keep playing to a higher number score ie. 19-10 or whatever.. Just keep score til the timer sounds.then losers rotate.

PARTNERS DO NOT SWITCH... Cause winners stay and loser walk.

Each court makes their own call on what to play from the above options..

If there is a tie = it's sudden death with a one point Rally scoring play.. Whomever has the service at this time will continue to serve. Which ever team wins the rally, gets the point and wins. You don't have to be serving to win this point...

If a game never reaches 11 pts. in the time allotted .. whomever has the highest score WINS. Move on...

Each court monitors their own pacing of play.. If someone is "dragging" and not keeping pace.. in an "adult" manner :) remind them "we are on a timer" We hope to keep the game moving and not have players 'stalling' to win or whatever the case is.. We are not playing league and it is all OPEN play, so they are not winning any prizes here.

Depending on how many players we have per night as well as how many court are available, will depend on how the rotation goes and where the BYE teams sit.

ALTERNATIVE: Play shorter times and games can be played to 7 or 9 pts. or whatever the time allows

Usually we have 2 courts running but numbers are growing and we sometimes can get the facility to open up one or two more courts for a total of 4 courts in the gym...

Depending upon the "local" open gym attendance at the Center.( this is the downfall but at least we have 2 courts regularly to work with.) We hope to overflow often:)

In any case, we hope to run it this week and see how it goes..

When I ran this in my PE classes it worked out very well when playing with partners and/or singles. I had 25-32 students per class moving around 4 courts when playing Badminton and Pickleball and 5 courts of Tennis outside. Because of the number of students we ran shorter 8 -10 minute games so that everyone played at least a few games in that day Depending on what we were working on... Our classes were 50 minutes long and I did this for years and rarely had a problem once everyone understood the rotation method.

It pretty much runs itself.. we just need someone with a timer watch or a LOL 'KITCHEN" timer to set each round.

This is an alternative to trying to keep paddles piles, cards or charts to keep everyone happy and playing. Also it avoid groupies hanging to play each other the 1st hour.

Just another alternative to rotation..