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Pickleball tournament held Tuesday

This year’s senior’s pickleball tournament took place on Tuesday, April 23rd, with some fierce but friendly competition among the players. Chanz Hutton, one of the officials, says pickleball is a growing sport.

This year’s senior’s pickleball tournament took place on Tuesday, April 23rd, with some fierce but friendly competition among the players.

Chanz Hutton, one of the officials, says pickleball is a growing sport.

“This particular tournament is held once a year. We’ve got people here from Swan River, Langenberg, Foam Lake, and Yorkton.

“The age categories go from 59 to 69. The games are broken up into three different categories -- mens, ladies, and mixed.”

The rules for scoring share some commonalities with other sports but have some uniqueness, too.

“The game is played to 11, and you can only score a point when you’re serving. When you initially start your serve, you only get one serve per team, and then on in it’s two serves. When one serve is lost, the next partner serves and then it goes to the other term. It’s to 11, so you have to win by two.”

David Weiman, who runs the local pickleball teams in Yorkton outlines the stakes.

“Basically this is a grand combination of the City of Yorkton working with the Sask Senior Fitness Association to put on what really is [sic] the pickleball playdowns for the Parkland Valley district.

“There’s eight districts in Saskatchewan; this is the Parkland Valley district.

“The neat thing that I like this time around -- we did this last year, too -- but we’re bringing people from elsewhere. We’ve got several people from Foam Lake, we have some people from Langenberg here; we have some people from Swan River here. They’re out of our district, but we’re just happy to have ‘em. They’re actually having the provincials. See, Manitoba seniors has provincials every year. Saskatchewan only has it every second year. The people that are here from Swan River, they’re getting ready because Manitoba provincials are going to be in Swan River.

“Remember, that this is only one sport of over 16 sports that the Sask Seniors Fitness puts together. I should say events, because we include wisk, and crib...all the rest of those great things because they’re a lot of fun, too.”