In this issue:

Changes Coming - Get Ready for Mandatory Cohort Registration

Red Willow Play Changes

Changes Coming - Get Ready for Mandatory Cohort Registration

We are changing our play to make it more overtly compliant with new health guidelines and to keep our members safer and healthier.

A mandatory cohort form is coming in the next two days. All members who want to play in future sessions this winter MUST reply to the mandatory form, thereby qualifying for this new play. A link to the form will be provided in an email to you.

You have seen in our news that COVID cases are rising in the Edmonton zone. In response, new restrictions on gatherings have been released for the Edmonton area. In addition, this month, there is new Guidance for Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation.

For the first time, pickleball is explicitly mentioned as a sport that must only be played in cohort groups. These rules also now clearly state:

• no one should be part of more than one sports cohort,
• sports cohort groups must have no more than 50 members, and
• participants switching sports cohorts should not play for a two-week interval.

In response, your board has passed a resolution that, for the foreseeable future, all our play will be more overtly and explicitly compliant with these rules. Your safety matters.

To do this as quickly as possible, here’s some of what will happen.

• A mandatory cohort form will be issued to all members by Oct 27.
• • Members will only have three days to respond.
  • The form will ask if you are in a well-functioning, cohesive cohort and want that cohort kept intact and assigned some play times in our calendars.
  • If you are not in a well-functioning, already-established cohort, you will have the opportunity for the club to place you in a new cohort. We will place you based on some high-level criteria. We DO NOT have the capacity to quickly plan this to meet everyone’s detailed criteria. We will do the best we can, using ONLY the criteria we have put into the survey.
• A second form will be issued to the identified leaders or prime contacts of the previously established, well-functioning cohorts to identify and confirm their SAPC members, desired play times, etc.
• Based on the results of these two forms, play times will be assigned to cohort groups.

If you already have an SAPC play time reservation at Red Willow, B-Active or Servus Place, please keep your reservation and attend the session you have booked. In addition, another week or two of reservations at Red Willow may be booked using the current reservation practices. No one expects that we can convert to explicit cohort-based play overnight.

Explicit cohort-based reservations will become available for some November times at Red Willow as soon as we can implement this.  The same will apply to January and subsequent play times at other venues.

What can you do now to get ready?

• If you are in a well-organized cohort, you need to quickly decide amongst the current members of that cohort if you want to belong to and play only in that cohort going forward. You also need to pick a leader or prime contact for that cohort, and each of you needs to identify that same leader on your responses to the mandatory cohort registration form. This will then be the SAPC cohort we assign you to.
• Watch for the mandatory cohort form and complete it with the three-day period.
• If you are a leader of an existing cohort:
• • pick a name for your cohort,
  • determine 1^st and 2^nd choices for play times (weekday mornings, weekday afternoons, weekday evenings, weekend days).  Note that weekday-day times are likely to remain more plentiful than evening and weekend times.
  • determine if your cohort wants some assigned reservation types like the following:
  • • reservable series play, where members pay up front for 8 to 14 weeks of play, once a week, first come-first served within the cohort, no refunds or cancellations. Members find their own substitutes within their cohort for any sessions they need to miss.
    • sticker-pay, individually-booked events, first come first served within the cohort, self-cancellations allowed
    • reserved cohort-determined play. This is open only to well established cohorts. It is cohort-determined play, where you assign play times to cohort members according to your own methods not using SAPC systems, and where the cohort figures out how to pay. This means either (i) pay up-front online with no refunds or (ii) pay by means of stickers on a sign-in sheet, and guarantee to the club that your cohort will always have the minimum number of stickers needed. This option is not recommended unless you already have a proven method of fairly and equitably assigning play times to all your cohort members.

Note that only SAPC members can be in SAPC cohorts. If someone wants to join our club now, they have only a day or two left to do so. Then we will likely suspend taking new memberships for at least a month and  until this new cohort-based play is well organized. This is only fair – we have new members joining every day and we usually welcome them. But we don’t want people inadvertently joining our club, paying their $30, then finding they can’t play with the club for two-plus months because they didn’t respond to the initial survey and because we’re not yet ready to start adding new members to existing cohort groups.

Wish us luck. Your club volunteers have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks to make this happen.

If you want to help us through future projects like this, or want to serve in any other volunteer capacity, please update your volunteer interests in your profile. You will find there are many options to choose from. Your profile can be found under the ‘head and shoulders’ icon (or arrow icon) in the top right corner of any page of your website.

Red Willow Play Changes

If you were to chat with fellow members about “how’s Red Willow play going for you??”…you’d possibly hear, “nice to be at it again inside away from the wind, my serves stay in!”, or-“Sit-play-sit s'more!!??”, or- “Not sure I’ll go anymore” ..etc..??

In early October we launched Red Willow (our solitary venue at the time) and have since heard feedback and have also launched more and different venue play opportunities.

Here’s what’s being done to address the play and financial stress of Red Willow play. (You probably didn’t know that Red Willow was teetering on a negative cost for the club).

Starting November 1^st, Red Willow Sessions will transition to the following:

• 10 player limit (at each session) - so captain plus 9 registrants.
• 2 stickers per player.

This change is to help us enjoy more quality play (less sit time!), and helps with the financially sustainability needed for this venue.

Keep your paddle up!