PickleballENGLAND
By Karen Mitchell
DIRECTOR , PICKLEBALL ENGLAND
MOMENTUM IS GROWING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POND
The Pickleball England 2022 annual general meeting ( AGM ) was held ( via Zoom ) at the end of November , just shy of our four-year launch anniversary . AGMs are important for national governing bodies for sport . It ensures that information is shared for transparency and provides an opportunity for members to ask questions , debate issues and vote when appropriate .
It is exciting to see how pickleball has grown in just four years . We have an ambitious growth target in our strategic plan of 25,000 members by 2025 and we think we are on target to reach that goal despite the COVID-19 pandemic closing venues for seven to nine months during 2020-21 . The table below shows the growth since our launch . We forecasted that by the end of 2022 we would have 8,000 players , 3,800 PbE members and 285 places to play .
This growth has been across the country but there are three regions that have been outstanding . Annualized growth for the North West Region is an incredible 179 percent , North East 141 percent and South West 103 percent . Kudos to the respective Regional Directors for these areas — Elaine Shallcross and her NW army , Val Vladea and her NE team and Richard Thoms and his SW crew .
For player numbers to grow there needs to be places to play , and since the last AGM , the number of clubs has almost doubled . The South East region has been the first region to have more than 100 places to play , with 104 locations listed on the club locator . The next biggest region is North West with 46 places , but the biggest growth has come from the North East region , which now has three times the number of places to play than at the last AGM .
We still have an age distribution that is skewed towards the over-50s but we now have a solid base of younger players — 6 percent are 29 and under . The reason for the 50 + bias is because court availability is highest during the day when younger people are at work or school . As clubs demonstrate they can build session numbers , I have no doubt evening and weekends will start to be offered when other bookings drop off . I know many clubs that keep adding sessions to keep up with demand , which has also driven them to offer sessions at different venues . I play in Eastbourne and in 2017 we had one morning session a week . Now we have two morning and one Saturday afternoon Open sessions and three more advanced player sessions in the afternoon during the week .
All this growth fuelled the need for a Pickleball Leaders Certification , which we introduced in 2021 . There was 120 percent growth in number of certified attendees in 2022 . This number could have been larger , but we need to expand our tutor group . More players have also fuelled the demand for more level 1 and 2 coaching qualifications . We added 17 new IPTPA coaches in 2022 and now have two Master Teaching Professionals in the country ( Sam Basford and Rob Williams ).
I gave an update at the AGM on where we were relative to our five-year strategy . We had passed Sport England ’ s pre-approval stage and are now preparing our full application . To help with the process , we engaged consultants to do a GDPR ( Global Data Protection Regulation ) review of our systems and procedures . We have also added to our policies to meet all Sport England requirements . Finally , I advised that we invested in public relations to raise awareness of pickleball . There were 22 articles