Let's talk Leagues!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: I wish I was recording. I could have captured your excitement. That would have been pretty awesome there. [00:00:04] Speaker B: I talk a lot about leagues. [00:00:08] Speaker A: I bet you do. A little Miss Pickle play. My guess is you talk a lot about leagues. Well, since we're on that and we're leading into our conversation today, which is about leagues. Okay, here on our sweet lobs pod, I'm Kevin Huff. I'm with the lovely, ever lovely Sky Huff. Sky. What are the most common types of leagues that people ask you about? [00:00:32] Speaker B: The most common types of leagues? [00:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Are they just ladder? Are they ladder leagues? [00:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say ladder leagues are. Are pretty common. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Are there any other kinds they talk about? [00:00:41] Speaker B: Well, there's partner leagues. [00:00:43] Speaker A: I mean, that's typically a ladder league still, right? You keep your same partner. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Yes, but we have. I mean, there's ways of doing it with just an individual. A scramble. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Yep. Okay, well, let's talk leagues today. But before we do that, I did have to put out a short addendum. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Update. [00:01:05] Speaker A: Update. Oops. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Oops pod. [00:01:09] Speaker A: Because I forgot two really important rules. When we were going through the rules, I got excited talking about the paddles and through me. And then we hit 30 minutes and we usually try to stop around half an hour. So yeah, I was like, Hey, 31 minutes. Let's close it out right here. And then went home. Went home, went home. I went home and I was laying in bed and I was like, oh, I forgot to. [00:01:32] Speaker B: We've all done that. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:34] Speaker B: So what I should have said kind of a moment. [00:01:36] Speaker A: You and I sent out a Thursday night. I think we sent out an update on those other two rules. So my apologies everybody for having to listen to the last podcast in two parts. However, that does not mean that we're not ahead of the game. Okay, sky, let's talk leagues. One of my favorite things to discuss. [00:02:03] Speaker B: Regarding pickleball from a business standpoint especially. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Well, interestingly enough, yes. Although I think I will stay away from the business side of it mostly and just focus on the operational side of it. Let's do that in this podcast. But leagues, let's. Let's kind of discuss what a league is like. Define a league, and then we'll go from there and talking about the sort of simplest type of leagues to maybe some of the more complex type of leagues. Okay, Okay. A league is, generally speaking, when a group of people to get together, they probably are paying money and they are competing against each other for potentially some kind of bragging rights or prize. But it's not a tournament, which is a definition For a tournament as well. Right. People get together, they pay, and they fight for a prize. But leagues, generally speaking, are recurring events. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:57] Speaker A: So weekly, for instance, weekly leagues is probably the most common type of league that exists. Now, in terms of the types of leagues that exist, I think you described one earlier, which is what we would call a partner league. I stay away from the term doubles league because that implies that there's two people playing in a game of doubles. Right. Because there's also singles leagues out there. [00:03:20] Speaker B: Of course. [00:03:21] Speaker A: So doubles leagues would be, you know, I have a partner and I'm playing a game, but I may change partners or I may keep the same partner. But what we call a partners league. Let's say you and I were working on our mixed team work together. We wanted to play in a league together. There are leagues with partners where you can stay with the same partner. The entire league. [00:03:37] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:03:38] Speaker A: All six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, whatever it is. Now, we have run leagues at several locations. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Well, we. Loosely. [00:03:49] Speaker A: We don't. Yeah. You really haven't? [00:03:52] Speaker B: No, I have. [00:03:53] Speaker A: At several locations. I have started from scratch here in Anderson. I've started from scratch in Pendleton, and then I've helped with other locations in both of. Well, not until. But several locations in Anderson, we have had literally over a thousand people come through and play in the leagues that we have run or started. [00:04:12] Speaker B: That's amazing. [00:04:13] Speaker A: It's pretty cool. And I don't say this to pat ourselves on the back, and when I say us, I'm actually referring to Robin and James and me. Robin and James Abels and me. We have some extra help from other wonderful people. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Right. It was Danny. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Pendleton, actually. It was really like Tiffany and Katie. Yeah, yeah. They were wonderful helpers. And then in Anderson, we also have, like, Mike and Luke. They're great helpers. We have Carrie and Eric. They're great helpers. But here's the thing that we. That I'm trying to impress upon people. So because we run so many leagues with so many different players coming through, we have learned a lot of the wrong things to do. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Always. [00:04:49] Speaker A: And a lot of the right ways to do things. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Of course. [00:04:51] Speaker A: And I kind of want to share some of those tonight, please. So we've defined a league. We've talked about the fact that it could be a singles league, Although most of the time we don't see singles leagues. We see doubles. And that's generally how pickleball is played, is mostly doubles. We've defined a doubles league as being with another partner, but it could change partners. That's kind of a round robin type of doubles league. Or you could have a partner league where you keep the same partner. The entire league. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Yep. [00:05:21] Speaker A: That's mostly what we do at Bethany Christian Church here in town. Whereas at Community Sports and Wellness, the other place we started leagues in Pendleton, they do the round robin type of. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Leagues, or I call them a scramble. [00:05:33] Speaker A: Sure, that's fine. [00:05:34] Speaker B: It's because you, you change partner and you change, you know, opponents each time. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what the term round robin means. So we tend to call it a round robin league. But scrambles, finding scrambles acceptable. I suppose it's kind of more reserved for golf, I think a scramble, but who cares? Whatever. [00:05:54] Speaker B: It might even be a regional term. [00:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. What if we want to call. It's fine. Now, there is starting with the simplest type of league and most leagues are ladder leagues. We'll define that further here in a minute. But the simplest type of league is a one day league. And I don't think that's a league. [00:06:12] Speaker B: I don't either. [00:06:13] Speaker A: But it gets called league in a lot of places. Like in Florida, there's a lot of one day leagues. In Arizona there's some one day leagues. And so I want to talk about that here in just a second. But let's define a league. Let's agree to define a league as more than one week in a row or more than one event on multiple days. [00:06:30] Speaker B: Makes sense. [00:06:31] Speaker A: Okay, so now let's go backwards and define the word ladder because it's mostly. Most leagues are ladder leagues. [00:06:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:36] Speaker A: A ladder, if you picture it like up against a wall, it's called these rungs. [00:06:40] Speaker B: And. [00:06:40] Speaker A: And each rung going up represents a higher level of play in the league or a higher court, if you will. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Of play in the league I'm tracking. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And a lower rung typically represents a lower court. Well, the perfect league would have four players per court. And after that night's league play is over, two of those players, the top two would move up one rung on the ladder or up a court, if you will. And the other two would drop down a court. And they're bypassing the two that are moving up. [00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:13] Speaker A: And the ones that are going up or bypassing the two that are coming down. And every ladder rung gets refilled with four players. The only two teams that don't move or two groups of people that don't move are the number one team because they stay on the top rung. [00:07:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:27] Speaker A: And the other than number one team. Don't I have that sound over here. I forget. [00:07:32] Speaker B: You do. [00:07:33] Speaker A: I don't know where it's at, but, um, the other team that's the opposite of number one, they stay on the bottom court. [00:07:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:40] Speaker A: Okay. So we've defined a ladder, we've defined a league, but we've really got all these different types of leagues then that exist inside of there. So a perfect league has four players per court, and exactly the number of teams then you have per. For the number of courts that you have. The challenge is you've got potentially actually a high potential of this happening. Potentially someone's going to call in and go, I have a flat tire, My kid's sick. I don't feel good. Boss made me stay at work. I have a call leaving town, whatever. Somebody died. I mean, all the. All the things. And if you have the exact number of people now you're. This is where the word scramble comes in. Now you're scrambling to find a backfill player sub who's on my sub list that I can call on at the last second and get them on here. Because if you don't, then three other people pay the price. That's true, because there's four people per court. So tip number one, we have found that in a round robin, what my wife likes to call a scramble league, five players per court is optimal. [00:08:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:48] Speaker A: Because if it drops to four, no big deal. [00:08:50] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:51] Speaker A: And if it stays at five, fantastic. And all we do is because in a group of five, they would play four games in a round robin. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:00] Speaker A: With our group of four, we just repeat the first game over. So 1 and 4 play together against 2 and 3 in round one. Then in round four, they would also have 1 and 4 against 2 and 3. Again, that's how we solve for that issue. [00:09:13] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:16] Speaker A: And we found that that radically reduces the number of people that miss games. Not that doesn't reduce flat tires or deaths in the family or anything else. So I get sick. But it reduces the number of courts where we have a problem. [00:09:27] Speaker B: Right. Because the other three people no longer have to miss, if that's right. [00:09:33] Speaker A: Got it. So that's tip number one. We strongly recommend groups of five per court. So in a round robin where you have three courts and we recommend 15 players in that league. [00:09:43] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:43] Speaker A: Okay. Second thing is, when you have five, if you're doing a ladder that's up and down, then the middle player stays on that court. We already defined that the top two go up and the bottom two go down. Well, the middle guy just stays. [00:09:56] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:57] Speaker A: So that's easy peasy here's the next thing. And I said I wasn't gonna spend much time on the business, but this is a business point. If you have five players per court, you do bring in extra revenue. [00:10:08] Speaker B: True. [00:10:09] Speaker A: So there's that. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Nice. [00:10:11] Speaker A: Okay, now, types of leagues besides ladder, like digging deeper, how do you keep score? How do you track? What do you do? Blah, blah, blah. There are companies out there like Duper, that and minor league pickleball that are partnering up and trying to spread leagues all across the nation. I don't wish them any luck. I hope that they fail. [00:10:31] Speaker B: Why? Well, I mean, just curious. [00:10:34] Speaker A: There's something very local about a league. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Okay. [00:10:37] Speaker A: And how it still drives community. And I think as soon as sort of Big Mama, big money, whatever comes in, right. Papa, Papa Warbucks comes in, all of a sudden it doesn't feel the same. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Okay. [00:10:50] Speaker A: And I'm kind of about the feels with pickleball because it's such a community oriented thing like we talked about on almost every podcast. [00:10:58] Speaker B: Almost every podcast we talk about the community at pickleball. [00:11:01] Speaker A: Couldn't agree more. And I think there's something to be said about it being run locally and being. Being managed and maintained locally, and the control is local. Whereas as soon as you sell out to a Duper or a minor league pickup or anybody else, well, now you're kind of giving up all that extra control that you have and the freedom and flexibility to make decisions on the fly that are good for the group as a whole, but that maybe wouldn't be doable if you weren't running your own system. Does that make sense? [00:11:31] Speaker B: It does. [00:11:32] Speaker A: Okay. And I say that knowing that my friend Zane and his. And his wonderful buddy Thomas, who run the Dink podcast, the Pickle Pod podcast, they run the Dink, that they're a part of the minor league pickleball rollout of leagues. I still want it to fail. I love Zane tremendously, but I still want it to fail. I just don't want it to succeed. Maybe that's because I want to rule the world with leagues. We'll find out about that later. [00:12:00] Speaker B: Well, it makes sense for them because when you're a pro and you're thinking about sustainability of that pro organization, you need to have some sort of funnel to take them from, you know, recreational player to tournament player, from tournament player to a travel league, and then from a travel league to the minors. [00:12:24] Speaker A: And that's the more complex pros. Yeah. [00:12:26] Speaker B: So I know. I see their. I see their logic and their funnel. [00:12:30] Speaker A: I don't think that's it. I just think they want to bring in the money because leagues make money. [00:12:35] Speaker B: They do make money. But I also do see the, the possibility of, of pros coming out of it. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Maybe. But the people running it aren't looking for the pros. [00:12:42] Speaker B: No. They're. It's, it's a revenue stream for them. [00:12:45] Speaker A: So. And I don't think there's a. Not that we want to get onto this this evening, but I don't think that there's really an issue of finding pros. In fact, we need to do a whole podcast on the MLP next time because it's a mess what they're doing. They're adding all these teams into the Premier League. They have to go out and find 44 more players. It's gonna get washed out. I mean, it's just. Yeah. So I, I don't mean to disagree with you, like, because I want to be disagreeable. I just don't think that's really it. I just think it's the money side. [00:13:11] Speaker B: I see, I see the logic. [00:13:13] Speaker A: There is certainly some possibility there. Okay, well, and by the way, you said travel leagues, which is probably the most complex type of league. So we'll get to that in a little bit. So back to the simplest type of league, which would be a one day league, which we've all defined now as agreeing that that's not a league. But since it's run in places like Florida, Arizona, etc, let's go ahead and define that one day league as this. It's king of the court, people. Yeah, it's just king of the court. [00:13:37] Speaker B: It's totally. [00:13:38] Speaker A: Just call it kotc, let's move on. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Yep. Or King of the Jungle. It depends on who you are. [00:13:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Queen of the. Queen of the palace. I don't care what you call it. It's just king of the court. It's not a league. [00:13:49] Speaker B: Yep. [00:13:50] Speaker A: I mean, there have been leagues forever. Basketball leagues are not one night. Bowling leagues are not one night. Leagues are not one night people. So if you're going to do a one day, quote unquote league, drop the league, call it king of the court. What it is. Because king of the court operates exactly like ladder leagues do, except the movement occurs that night after every game instead of at the end of the night moving into next week. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And be. And pay attention to what you're naming your event because it will cause confusion. So don't call an event a league if it's just one night. Don't call drills if it's just going to be one night. If it's. If it's one night, drills, it's a clinic. If it's going to be an ongoing type of practice, then call it drills. So let's just. Let's just start. [00:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Forming a. [00:14:40] Speaker A: See, now I got Genesis. Land of Confusion. I actually have disturbed version in my head. Disturbs. Land of Confusion in my head. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:48] Speaker A: Because it's what it creates. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Each other. [00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's what it creates. So now let's talk about leagues. Regular defined leagues. No more one day crap. Here's the simplest kind of league. It's just a ladder league. You play to 11. Win by one or win by two. I don't care. Track everyone's results next week. The top two moved up, the bottom two move down, and that's it. Okay. Easy peasy. Then there are all these variations on how you can potentially score those games. For instance, there's a variation called Leapfrog. There's a variation called Leapfrog Plus. [00:15:21] Speaker B: Oh, wow. We're really getting it. [00:15:23] Speaker A: There's a bunch. I'm gonna make this quick, though. Don't worry. [00:15:25] Speaker B: Okay. I was gonna say you're. You're going down a rabbit hole. [00:15:27] Speaker A: Well, it's about leagues. And the thing is, Global Pickleball Network has a bajillion leagues, and it's probably the top league software in the nation, and they use Leapfrog and Leapfrog Plus. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Okay. [00:15:38] Speaker A: So if anyone's really interested in this topic, they might have it on their mind. [00:15:41] Speaker B: Okay, so there are some people that don't like Leapfrog. [00:15:45] Speaker A: Oh, no. I'm one of them. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:47] Speaker B: I didn't always know that. [00:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't love it anyway, so. I don't hate it. I just don't love it. Leapfrog. Let's just say that you're on a team with Robin and I'm on a team with James. Okay, you guys have 300 points coming into this game, and we have 228. Okay, but we beat you. We leapfrog you. We now have 301 or 300. Depends on whatever system you look at. But yeah, we're supposed to leap ahead of you, so 301. Okay, you get your nine points for the game. So now you're at 309 and we get our 11 points for the game. Now we're at 312, but we leapfrog you first and then we add our points from the game. Okay, that's Leapfrog. We're now ahead of you in the Ladder. Because we got more points than you. So we play on a higher court next week. [00:16:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Unless in the very next game, somebody else beats us and they leapfrog us. And then you leapfrog them in the game after that. And now we're way back below you again. So every game there's leapfrogging. So the last game of the night matters the most. You got to win the last game of the night because that leapfrogs you at least above one team. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:49] Speaker A: Okay. Or one player, and that's difficult. Leapfrog plus is difficult to do without partners. [00:16:55] Speaker B: What's the difference between leapfrog and leapfrog plus? [00:16:58] Speaker A: Great question. Here's the plus. All the leapfrog stuff is still true. But in any given game, there's a specific number of points that can be scored. If we're playing 211, win by one, then the most number of points that can be scored in that game is 21. My team gets 11. We beat you. Your team gets 10. That's the most you can get without us because it's win by one. So in other words, someone's gonna get to 11 first. [00:17:25] Speaker B: Right. [00:17:25] Speaker A: You can't tie at 11. [00:17:26] Speaker B: No. [00:17:27] Speaker A: So 1110 most is the highest score you can have. That means that 21 points is the most you can have. But if we beat you 11, five, that's 16 points. There's still five more points out there that could have been scored. [00:17:42] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:42] Speaker A: That's the plus. The winning team gets those extra five points. [00:17:46] Speaker B: Wow. I feel like you're. It's. [00:17:49] Speaker A: And that is the league format used at Bethany Christian Church. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:53] Speaker A: Leapfrog plus. So you're going into playing on Wednesday night leagues this next. [00:17:57] Speaker B: This next week. I did. I made it. [00:17:58] Speaker A: You want. You got into the playoffs. Congratulations. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. We did go for chicken dinner after you won last night. [00:18:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:18:05] Speaker A: We went for chicken thigh, though, and it was really good. Did you have chicken? Okay. Just making sure. Oh, yeah. So when you and your partner Tina, beat another team, the more you beat them by, the more points you get. Because you get your 11 plus the gap between they could have scored 10 and whatever they did score. [00:18:25] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:18:26] Speaker A: So in the instance of them scoring six, there's 10, minus six is four. You get four extra points. So they get six, which is what they scored. But you get 11 plus four, you get 15. And that's the plus part of league fog plus. [00:18:38] Speaker B: And that makes it tougher. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Well, now you've got more points, it. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Makes it tougher for people Coming like it does from behind. [00:18:48] Speaker A: Because the next team that beat beats you, all I do is beat you. And they jump. They leapfrog you. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Okay. [00:18:52] Speaker A: So it doesn't really do that as much as it, um. [00:18:57] Speaker B: So why. Why is it not your favorite? Well, I mean, like, you're a math guy, so that sounds like that would be fun for you. [00:19:05] Speaker A: When we run our leagues at Bethany, and I don't really run them anymore, I. I want to make sure I'm crystal clear about that. I helped start them, and I ran them for a couple years with those guys, but I haven't run them for the last several years. Robin and James do all that work. [00:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah. You got busy. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Well, doesn't matter. They were willing to do it. And I do other things. I run Saturday mornings. I run beginners. So we kind of divide and conquer. [00:19:23] Speaker B: They do a great job too. [00:19:24] Speaker A: They do. And I'm not picking on them when we run leapfrog. Plus, I believe we get too much separation among the two different groups that play on Monday night and Wednesday night. So we have 14 teams that play on six on three courts. But what we do is we break it down to seven teams at 6pm and seven teams at 8pm so there's one extra team that's always on a buy. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:48] Speaker A: All right. Of those seven teams, there's a major disadvantage to the team that has a buy in the last round. There's nobody. They can. They don't get to score any points in the last round. [00:19:57] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:58] Speaker A: So now automatically they're very likely to not move on up to the top group. But the team that gets the buy in the last round is the last place team coming in. Wait, is the first place team. I forget. I think it's the first place team coming in. So that's a major disadvantage. [00:20:13] Speaker B: You. [00:20:13] Speaker A: You come in first and then you don't get to 20 points in the last round. And if I'm wrong and it's the last place team, it makes it even harder for the last place team to move on. So I don't like either of those versions. Right. Those formats. And the reason I say move on is because our ladder plays at 6 and at 8, and you might play either at 6 or 8, depending on where you are on the ladder. If you were at 6 and you were the top team and the. And the 8 o'clock group's bottom team has less points than you, you trade places, you go up to the 8 o'clock ladder. It's just one big long ladder. But there's Like a divine line between six and eight in the middle. But you could play either one. Well. I think it creates too much division between 6 and 8. [00:20:49] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:20:49] Speaker A: I don't think there's enough movement across the two time slots because they're kind of leapfrogging each other in their own space. But the top group always has more points than the bottom group does. [00:21:00] Speaker B: And the last time we played lead together, we would jump back and forth between the 6pm hour and the 8pm. [00:21:07] Speaker A: And there's one or two teams that do that. [00:21:08] Speaker B: And it. It. It is disruptive. [00:21:10] Speaker A: It is disruptive. We didn't mind too much, but. But there's only one or two teams that that really happens for. It doesn't happen for all 14 teams. No, that's what I'm saying. If it happened for 10 of the teams, I think it'd be really cool, but to me, it's a little too restrictive. James loves it. He's one that really is in charge of that part of it. And I'm grateful for him and what he does. So I'm not. I've. I'm not. This may be the first time you'll ever hear that I don't like it. I don't know. But I'm not in a position to go try and influence anyone and say, change it. I don't want to do that. [00:21:40] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:40] Speaker A: If he likes it and he wants to run it and he keeps getting plenty of people signed up for it, who cares? [00:21:44] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Most of us don't get that granular. Exactly. [00:21:50] Speaker A: Totally. And that's fine. [00:21:52] Speaker B: We're really there to have fun. [00:21:54] Speaker A: So we've got doubles leagues, round robin, doubles leagues, leapfrog. Leapfrog. Plus now we've got double leagues that are partner leagues where you keep the same partner. We talked about that earlier. [00:22:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:22:06] Speaker A: So you and I played in the league together. We played all 10 weeks. We played six games every night. It was awesome. We played 60 total games together in that league. [00:22:12] Speaker B: Well worth the money. [00:22:13] Speaker A: Totally well worth the money. Then you. And by the way, we call our league Tournament Prep. That's why we stay together with the same partner the whole time. [00:22:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Because you and I wanted to prepare for a tournament to play together in that tournament. And we played better in that next tournament. [00:22:28] Speaker B: We did. [00:22:29] Speaker A: And so we called a tournament Prep League. Then we've got travel leagues. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:36] Speaker A: So this kind of used to happen a lot with, like, church softball. [00:22:40] Speaker B: Did we talk about being able to sign up as an individual and play? [00:22:44] Speaker A: Yeah. That's just A doubles league with round robin. [00:22:46] Speaker B: But I think we need to go through that before you go on to travel. [00:22:50] Speaker A: Well, I think we covered it. But to be crystal clear, you don't have to bring your partner. [00:22:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:54] Speaker A: You just go sign up for a league, and then every night you on. You're on your own rattle, rather you're on your own ladder rung. And you will be partnered with the four of the people that are out on that court. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Yes. [00:23:05] Speaker A: So if their partners, if the players are A, B, C, and D, I will play one game with A, one game with B, one game with C, one game with D. And then there's one game when those four people are playing and I'm watching. [00:23:15] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Because you're E. But that's just a doubles ladder league. [00:23:19] Speaker B: We hit it. We just didn't explain it in detail. [00:23:22] Speaker A: So that's kind of how that would actually work. So, yeah, you can sign up as an individual for those, and I call. [00:23:25] Speaker B: This a scramble, and that's. [00:23:27] Speaker A: Which is fine. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Y. [00:23:28] Speaker A: Again, most people are doing that type of league. Yeah, that's the most common. [00:23:33] Speaker B: You don't have to sign up with a partner. That's one of the hardest parts. [00:23:35] Speaker A: Super common. And then you don't have to find a. A substitute for your partner. We're going to God because it's spring break or Christmas or whatever the heck's going on, Although hopefully everyone's off on Christmas. Okay. So then there's these travel leagues, and like I said, there's. You know, I'm sure it existed before church softball, but I really think of church softball when I think of travel leagues. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Because you go from church to church to church to play, and you. Or sometimes all your churches will get together and play at the same ball field. [00:24:03] Speaker B: Yep. [00:24:03] Speaker A: But church basketball is often a travel league where you, you know, you play one night at Bethany, and then you go to the Catholic church and you go to the Methodist church, and you kind of bounce around all the different churches. And that's a travel league. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:24:15] Speaker A: We don't play in any of those around here, but I'd like to start one. And I think there's probably just enough places now where we could create a travel league. [00:24:23] Speaker B: Where we're at. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Yeah. There weren't enough courts before in terms of the number of locations with courts. And certainly I think outdoors we could really pull it off. But, you know, then you got to get the city involved and beg for the parks, and, you know, it's work. [00:24:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:40] Speaker A: And just a side note, it's a Lot of work to run leagues and we don't get paid for that like Robin and James. They donate 100% of it back to the church. Either to the church or to our efforts to build courts up above at the church. So we've got money in a fund waiting to do, you know, some more work there. But. But we, we also sponsor tournaments, whatever else. But I mean, the money that comes in, you know, you can do something with it. We've bought paddles before for kids, for. We buy tons of balls, we buy tons of nuts. And this is the business side of leagues, which is you can, I don't say make money like a job, but you can make money to help fund things in your area with leagues. So if you want to fund, you know, an inner city pickleball program, we'll run a couple leagues, make us make a couple thousand dollars, put that money towards paddles and balls for kids, and then start doing some really cool beginner classes and work with kids. Yeah. So travel leagues is probably the most complex version of leagues that's out there. But I have a feeling that what's coming from minor league pickleball and Duper is going to be even more complex. I have a feeling they're going to start creating like regionals and nationals and. Oh, yeah, yeah. I know it sounds obvious and they probably already are going down that path, but I don't like them enough that I haven't paid attention. So there's that anyway, that's kind of leagues. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. [00:26:00] Speaker B: I think it's also where you can, you know, just some of the things, some of the benefits that we haven't really talked about necessarily from leagues is one, you are able to play with a. A variety of people, usually right around your same level, maybe a little higher or a little lower. But that makes. [00:26:24] Speaker A: On your ladder. [00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, on your ladder. It makes it more fun competition wise. You're not getting left in the dust or you're not bored. The other thing I love about leagues is it does build community. You make a whole new set of friends and you also, especially with a scramble where you're signing up as an individual and you're playing with different partners, it helps you kind of figure out how to communicate better in the game as well as maybe help you locate a great tournament partner. [00:26:56] Speaker A: Sure, for sure. [00:26:57] Speaker B: Whether it's a mixed double situation or the same gender, so. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Or just somebody fun to play with on Saturday morning. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, there's just a lot of benefits outside of the game that you experience when you're in a league. [00:27:14] Speaker A: So I agree. Community and all. Now let's talk about variations really quickly of kind of a lot of those leagues. And this will be pretty easy, pretty fast. You can have skill based leagues, which we do. Monday night's an advanced league. Wednesday nights intermediate league. Thursday night's sort of a. Not beginner, but novice league. You can have age based leagues. You can have junior leagues for kids. You could have adult leagues, senior leagues, women's leagues. Well, that's gender leagues. Which is next? You could have women's, you could have men's. And we used to do women's at. [00:27:40] Speaker B: And that's always been really popular. [00:27:42] Speaker A: It's been really popular at csw. You can have mixed doubles leagues, you can have co ed leagues where, you know everyone's out on the courts, which is kind of what's normal. Yep. Then you can have team based leagues, which we did not talk about, but that's multiple players that are competing against other, other players. Let's just say Monday night we went down to six teams. What we could do, three teams is like. Is like team A and the other three teams are team B. And then you would play against A's, would play B's, maybe a double round robin. And at the end of the night, did A win or did B win? So you kind of have team, what we call team based leagues. [00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:23] Speaker A: Then we have what we call handicapped leagues. And this is not like wheelchair pickleball, which is actually kind of popular and pretty cool. [00:28:30] Speaker B: It is. [00:28:30] Speaker A: It is a handicap league is where, let's say that you and I are taking on, you know, Josh and Trent. [00:28:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:28:38] Speaker A: Well, we're gonna get smoked. [00:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:40] Speaker A: So there's a handicap. Maybe we start ahead 6 to 0. [00:28:43] Speaker B: Ooh. [00:28:44] Speaker A: So anyway, that's. [00:28:45] Speaker B: That's a feeling. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what's called a handicap. A 9 0, 100 sounds more appealing. Uh, but that's called a handicap league. Um, and then there's what's called a flex league. And James has kind of always wanted to try this, but hasn't really done it yet. And I support it big time. But it is tough. Here's how flex league works. Every week, James would send out your schedule to you, right? Well, Robin would probably send it out if we're honest. Right. But Robinson's out the schedule to you, and it says that you and I have to play Carrie and Eric Bilbinkel. [00:29:13] Speaker B: Okay. [00:29:13] Speaker A: And we have to play Dusty and Jeanette Brown. [00:29:17] Speaker B: Okay. [00:29:17] Speaker A: And we've got to play whoever Else, Steve and Amy. Okay, well we just have to make sure that happens during the week, anytime we want, any location we want. We just have to schedule those three matches. [00:29:27] Speaker B: Wow. So if you're a bus, like if you're working the medical field when you have crazy hours. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. [00:29:34] Speaker A: And we would probably do like a two out of three instead of just one game since we're playing only three teams. I mean, and you can build it however you want. You can play six teams. But the more teams you choose to play in any given week, the harder it is to schedule them. All right, so you play against two or three other teams. You do like your best two out of three or best three out of five and then you report your scores and that's. They're just self scheduled matches. But if they don't occur, that's the hardest part. That's the problem is like what do you do? [00:29:58] Speaker B: Well, you have to have committed. [00:29:59] Speaker A: Well, you have to have penalties because you have to think like a league director. [00:30:02] Speaker B: Oh. [00:30:04] Speaker A: So a league director needs to have penalties for any leagues. When people don't show up, that are supposed to show up, there needs to be a barrier of call it 24 hours ahead where they need to notify you if they're not going to be able to make it. So there's time to fix things. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:15] Speaker A: But if they don't make it an hour ahead, there has to be some kind of penalty. Your team, you, your team. Or you lose 10 points, you get, you forfeit every game and you get zero points for that. It's like something. There has to be a penalty because we found that that holds people more accountable to being there on the things that really aren't keeping them from coming. And they just wanted an excuse. [00:30:34] Speaker B: Sure. [00:30:35] Speaker A: Somebody gets a flat tire, you can't do anything about it. [00:30:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:38] Speaker A: But at the same time it screws over a lot of other players. So you still have to have some kind of penalty built in. And, and that sucks. But you know, it is what it is. So I think with flex leagues and self scheduled matches, you really have to have a strong penalty engaged so that all four players make sure that that game happens. [00:30:55] Speaker B: True. [00:30:57] Speaker A: And then there's what I would call corporate or. Yeah, let's call it corporate leagues where you remember the old corporate challenge, of course, kind of a spin off of that. And then you have like prize and money leagues. [00:31:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:12] Speaker A: Which are pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's probably the big ones. We could even say that you have seasonal leagues. You could have an outdoor league and an indoor league and they play in the outdoors in the summers and indoors in the winters. But we do that anyway because we're pickleball players. So that's a little cheesy. That's a lot on leagues. [00:31:30] Speaker B: It is. That is a very good overview rundown. [00:31:36] Speaker A: I say overview, would you say scramble? [00:31:39] Speaker B: Why do you not like that word? [00:31:41] Speaker A: I just. It's fine with me. I just never really heard it called that before. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Well, if you're using certain software, it might be. You have to get used to the terminology. And some software calls it scramble. [00:31:53] Speaker A: Are you saying that pickle play calls it a scramble? Is that why you're hung up on the word? [00:31:56] Speaker B: We do, but we're not the only ones. Think about a golf scramble. Or I mean, it's a common sports term. [00:32:07] Speaker A: It is. So do you know what a golf scramble is? [00:32:12] Speaker B: I have volunteered to help run a golf scramble, but if you were to ask me to define it. No. [00:32:19] Speaker A: A golf scramble is a team based tournament where all the players hit their shots from the same place, but they're all a team together. You're using scramble to define a tournament or a league where people continue to change their. Who their team is or who their partner is. And that's, I think, why I'm hung up on it. Cause in a, in golf, a scramble, you stay on the same team the whole time. Okay, so in pickleball, you wouldn't stay on the same team if. If we used your word scramble. I don't think you're wrong. I think that word is used probably even potentially nationwide. I just think round robin's the more common name for it. That's all. [00:32:53] Speaker B: Sure. But a lot of times in, when I'm talking with customers, if I say a round robin, they automatically go to tournament, of course, in their brain. So we always have to define it. [00:33:06] Speaker A: Maybe we should call it like a round robin scramble or something. Like maybe we need to combine those two terms. [00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah, and. And like our software has a scramble round robin where you don't have to. [00:33:15] Speaker A: So you do use that word in your software. [00:33:16] Speaker B: We do. But in our case it's so that you don't have to sign up with a partner because you're basically scrambling each team every time. [00:33:28] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:28] Speaker B: Each round. [00:33:29] Speaker A: Right. And that's the normal pickleball ladder. [00:33:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:33:34] Speaker A: Good stuff. [00:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that about does it though, right? [00:33:38] Speaker B: I think so. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Listen, we appreciate you all way more than you know. And it's because of listeners like you that help us stay ahead of the game. And so what do we always say, Sky? Tell your friends that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. You got it right. Say it again. [00:33:54] Speaker B: We're ahead of the game, and so are.