Aiken Pickleball News
Starting Wednesday, October 5, and every Wednesday thereafter until the middle of December, Clinics with Coach Mo will be offered at Smith-Hazel Recreation Center from 9-11am. The first five sessions are available for sign up.
Each week will work on a different stroke for the first hour, then practice play the second hour. The clinics will be given by our head teaching professional Mo Garcia and are intended for 2.0-3.0 players looking to improve their pickleball skills. Schedule as follows:
Oct 5 - Return of Serve, down the line.
Oct 12 - Dinks with a purpose; hitting your target spots
Oct 19 - Half Volley soft drop; Half Volley drives.
Oct 26 - Overhead smash; Volley snap at the kitchen.
Nov 2 - 3rd Shot drop
Nov 9 - Drive topspin Volley
Nov 16 - King/Queen of the court, (Doubles)
Nov 23 - Thanksgiving week
Nov 30 - Block volleys at the net.
Dec 7 - Lobs
Dec 14 - Specialty shots (Various Big Mo Shot choices).
Cost is $10 per person for a two hour clinic. Each session is limited to a maximum of eight players (minimum of three). Payment should be made at the Smith-Hazel front desk and the receipt presented to the instructor. Click here to sign up or select “Clinics with Coach Mo” under our Sign-up lists. The first five sessions will be available on August 15 for sign up.
The membership card you use to access Odell Weeks will allow you entry into Smith-Hazel as they are both City of Aiken recreational facilities. The daily fee at Smith-Hazel for non-members to play pickleball is $3. The Smith-Hazel Recreation Center is located at 400 Kershaw Street in northeast Aiken.
Thanks to everyone who showed up today on August 1st, to get Funday Monday off to such a great start. Following is a quote from one of the players that participated. "Today was an outstanding day to play pickleball, it reminded me of the days I started playing."
If you have the good fortune to play with 4.0s or some of the stronger players on Monday Funday, do yourself and them a favor - hit the ball to/at/by/thru/over them. You both will enjoy the results. Click here to read what you should do if "Your Opponents Won’t Hit the Ball to You."
On Mondays all six courts will be open for drop in play from 845-10am mixed play and 10-11am court designation.. We are encouraging higher rated players to join us this one day per week for early morning mixed level play to pass on their expertise to others. . We all want the experience of playing with better players - well here is our chance. And for the better players this is your chance to "pay it forward". Hope to see you all there for our Funday Monday. We hope each of you will spread the word personally to people you play with. Thanks for your support.
The Aken Department of Public Safety and the Cayce Police Department are planning a Pickleball Battle of the Badges on August 23rd in Cayce SC. Please save this date on your calendar to come out and support our local ADPS. More details on timing and location will be forthcoming.
A drill and practice session for ADPS is scheduled for Saturday July 23rd at 8:30 in Odell Weeks gym 1. We need four volunteers to help Mo train the ADPS Pickleball team. If you are available for 2-3 hours and want to help please sign up here
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050b4ba9a62ca5fb6-volunteers3
APB
Hello Aiken Pickleballers
Here are the final results from the Senior Tournament interest survey-- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JKVa5X44NhpNJNGz9T-HDougJ2j0dgfb/view?u...
Looks like there is good interest to hold a competitive senior tournament with age brackets starting at 50+ this fall. We are looking at Saturday November 12th for the tournament, look for an announcement soon. We suspect there will be interest from Augusta and Columbia for a senior tournament.
Here are a few of the suggested tournament names from the survey.
Super seniors
Aiken Senior Piccadilly Tourney
Aiken PB Nuggets
Pickleball Bug Senior Tournament
Senior Picklers
We're still here!!
Movers and Shakers
Born To Rally
Be safe out there
APB
Click here to read the article about the City Challenge tournament.
We had a no frills, no fee, no medals, no worries Open Scramble on Saturday, July 9th at Odell Weeks - six games - rotating partners. Check-in and court setup began at 12:30pm. First 24 that sign up were in. Admission - one Onix Fuse orange ball - returnable. . Five players were moved up from the wait list.
The next Skill Rating Sessions will be held on a Monday, December 19th the Smith-Hazel Recreation Center between 9am-1pm. Click here to sign up to be rated in the next session..