brackets posted at the tournament site, the referee will know what format you are playing in, but the referee’ s number-one responsibility is to watch that non-volley zone line and call foot faults when they occur. Calling the non-volley zone is essential to ensuring that one team doesn’ t gain an unfair advantage over another team by being illegally closer to the net to put balls away. The referee also calls the score each point, keeps up with who the first and second servers are, and can be solicited to validate a call if asked by a player. Otherwise all other lines, except the non-volley zone line, is the responsibility of the players to call.
Line Judges. In my first tournament, I thought we had line judges, so why would I have to call the lines? Well, line judges are typically used in your gold medal matches only; however, some tournaments will include line judges in bronze medal matches as well. The line judge’ s responsibility is to call the ball in or out for the line he / she is judging.
Please remember that referees and line judges are volunteers doing the best job they can, so always be courteous to them and thank them when your match is completed.
If after reading about the referees you are thinking you might prefer to be a tournament referee rather than a tournament player, then check out the USAPA’ s Rules and Referees at www. usapa. org.
Refereeing sounds awesome, but I still want to play … can I do both? Yes, you can.
OK, so how do I know what skill level to enter if I’ m playing in a skill level tournament? There are multiple ways and it’ s not a one-size-fits-all. The best you can do is determine your skill level based on how well you fare against other players who have been given a rating by a club, the USAPA, or perhaps a tournament. If you don’ t have access to those options to help assess your skill level, you can always visit the following website that will give you some guidelines as to how best to determine your skill: www. usapa. org / ratings-usapa /. Once you have a few tournaments under your belt you’ ll get a better idea of what your“ true” skill level is.
What do tournament directors do to help newbies learn the ropes? This varies from nothing, to providing clinics before the tournament, to offering newbie brackets, to having folks around the tournament site who can answer questions. The best advice we can give you here is to reach out to the tournament director and ask what you need to know for participating in that tournament. This is good advice for the veteran player as well!
We hope you’ ve found this article informative, helpful and, most of all, motivating to sign up for that first pickleball tournament. Grab your lucky paddle and go have some competitive fun.
If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact pickleballtournaments. com anytime via email at info @ pickleballtournaments. com or via phone at 602.284.2678. •
JULY / AUGUST 2016 | MAGAZINE 37