Teaching Youth in White Rock, BC   by Chuck Lefaive, USAPA Regional Ambassadaor

Teaching youth is a key component to growing any sport . The May issue of the Lower Mainland pickleball newsletter contains a full treatment on the subject . Suffice to say that in the month of April we, in White Rock BC  have trained 450 grades 4,5,6,7 in the White Rock South Surrey area to play PB . The three schools involved were Star – of – the Sea School   HT Thrift and Green Timbers school – all elementary schools. The format used has been five weeks – one morning per week 9-12AM . The fifth week is a tournament screening out the grades 6 and 7’s  to 6 team finalists who play a final for gold, silver, and bronze medal  winner. Medals are made up with template and school is imprinted.

Since no tourney for kids would be complete without a cheer – a prize for the best cheer is included ( some super ones have emerged. ) All schools are located adjacent to leisure centers or parks that have public double marked courts so the utilization of these facilities will be guaranteed to increase. The schools have blocks for sports so if  we can be one of those blocks - we will be invited back next year to tourney the lower grades.  

 This program has been so popular ( some 900 students have now gone through it in two years ) that we now are getting requests from the school boards to train ALL of their teachers for their whole municipalities. Wow . A nominal fee is charged as most sports who come in do . Ours is the lowest and the funds used to grow the sport.

All courts are monitored by our volunteer seniors with one instructor using a pre – prescribed level 1 course. There is an evaluation form for the teachers to fill in at the end.

Ratings have been fvery high. We have the teaching power with our seniors and no other sport here does this quality of a course that works every time. These kids at the tourney level after five 30 minute seessions are  awesome. We will have a video cd/dvd of this year’s championship game available soon and it will be used to teach the teachers . Ho Ho HO .

Finally, the exposure of including our seniors to teach has other benefits – they can now go out and teach too. I might add that this template is reproducible in all adult instruction as well.

Here is pix of the same teach /tourney / drop in from principal and on the right hon Mr Gordon Hogg minister of fitness for the British Columbia government who dropped in to the the sport for the first time.
Drop in from principal and on the right hon Mr Gordon Hogg minister of fitness for the British Columbia government who dropped in to the the sport for the first time.