I wanted to take this chance to send out an email blast and clarify a number of issues/comments/results that are floating around the courts. Myself, CAM and the BOD have been getting and answering a lot of emails daily with incorrect information/ accusations/allegations from not only our club members, but Grand residents as well, so I thought, “Let’s Nip This in the Bud”..
We will be talking about these and other topics at the February Pickleball Club Members Meeting on Tuesday, February 8, 2022 from 3-5PM in the Agua Fria Room and as a majority of our members don’t attend, this eblast is a good venue to communicate with the entire club. This will be a lengthy email, so please read it until the end.
- Drop In(9-Noon Daily) – Our old way, during and before COVID was to set up/build a court with 5-6 players and play for 2-3 hours daily during drop in. Like it or not, this is not considered “Drop In”, but is really “Private Play”. Yes, there were some courts that you could walk on and play, but not very many of them. We all had our little groups and for the most part, stuck with them. When more and more new members brought this up to us, the club’s BOD’s knew that we needed to look into it and come up with some new ideas. During a monthly club meeting, a committee was formed to look into and make changes to better the situation. While it was/is not perfect, it is what we have for the foreseeable future. The courts are now broken down by skill levels and challenge courts for each skill level. There are 16 courts for drop in(The new way) and 6 challenge courts (Basically, the old Drop In). For whatever reason, the courts were starting to become empty by 1030-11AM each morning and this led to THE VOTE. With the courts seemingly empty at 11 AM, did Drop In have to be 3 Hours? I do have to say, that the courts now seem to be full most days, up to noon and the monthly swipe in counts, seems to back this up. New and improved signage and maps will be going up in the near future.
- THE VOTE – Should we reduce the Drop In period from 3 hours down to 2 hours? I sent out an eblast for club members to vote on the issue. Again, I received many, many emails both for and against it. I was hoping that there would be an overwhelming majority either way, but with 980 out of 1531 members casting votes, the vote is a virtual tie – 507 voted yes and 473 voted no. 34 votes separated the two and your board felt that it didn’t make sense to make a change at this time.
- APPL League – The APPL is an inter-community league for men’s, women’s and mixed team pickleball played between 8 or so other communities in the valley. It runs from January through March and the teams have Home and Away games. The idea of inter-community play has been around for years and a couple of years ago, was approved by our CAM and HOA board. This is something that other clubs have been doing for a number of years. Tennis, Lawn Bowling, Bridge, Dance, and Softball are just some of the Grand clubs that do inter-community events. It requires that teams that want to play in these inter-community leagues, get approval from the club (It was brought up and approved by the pickleball club during the January 14, 2020 club members meeting). The teams were required to present CAM with the list of their Home games for approval and the number of courts to be utilized for the matches. It was also supposed to be done during the clubs “Down Time” which has typically been between 2-4PM daily. The AAPL teams did what was required and received approval from CAM and started play in January. It falls on me to take the blame for not communicating this league play better with the entire club and I will be doing so in the future, There have been quite a few emails to myself, CAM and the BOD about the APPL league and peoples inability to reserve courts and people are blaming the Grand APPL teams (by the way, ALL members of the Grand Teams are Grand Residents) for the reason they can’t get a court from 2-4 PM. The league takes between 3-5 courts for the Home games and usually release 1-2 courts back before the matches. Every time there are Home matches, there have been anywhere from 6-9 Reserved Courts wide open with no one on them. They are booked on the TV monitors, but no one showed up to use them
- Reserving Courts – This is a huge problem each and every day. People work their magic each night at 9PM and book courts (I have tried multiple times and I can never get a court booked) and then for whatever reason, don’t show up and don’t take the time to release the court (If you book it, you have the ability to release it). With the size of our club, every court counts. If you are not going to use your reserved court, LET IT GO. We are going to be looking at ways to tackle this situation very soon.
- PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT – (Latest SCAM) – Yesterday, I received a call from my bank about some fraudulent charges made to my bank account. Supposedly, someone was trying to use my bank card in Texas at a Walgreens and Walmart and my bank had stopped them. This person stated that he was making sure that I had indeed not made those purchases. I told the caller that I wasn’t comfortable sharing any type of information with him and how do I know for sure that he was from my bank. He asked me to check the phone number on my bank card and the one that he was calling from. They both matched. I was on the phone with this man for almost a half hour (I was checking my bank account at the same time online). I didn’t give him much information as I still wasn’t comfortable. Fast forward to today when I get a notice from my bank stating that my account was shut down due to a fraud risk. It seems that the man who called me using the banks SPOOFED phone number, turned around and SPOOFED my phone number to the bank and tried to transfer ALL of my money into someone else’s account. Thankfully my bank didn’t fall for a young man posing as an old man and shut everything down. These criminals are very good at what they do. I would suggest that if you get a call from your “Bank”, stating that they are investigating fraudulent claims, take their name and call your bank to check it out.
- With that, I am off of my soap box. I hope to see you on the courts and at the monthly club meeting.
Thanks
Troy