Can-Am Pickleball

With the return of the Canadians to CVR this year, so came the return of the Can-Am Paddle Battle! Woohoo! 40 USA picklers, and 40 Canadian picklers.

The Canadians wore their red and white proudly while the Americans did the same in their (red/white) and BLUE.

The Canadians sang their National Anthem, and then we sang ours. And with that the round robin format started.

PRIOR to game day:
To be as fair as possible, the players were previously divided into an “A” group (intermediate/advance), and a “B group” (beginner/intermediate). Having two groups facilitated having games with four people of similar skill level. Then each player showed up to draw a number that would be used within their group to determine random partner pairings for each game. Since there were two separate round robins to make this work, Group A and Group B alternated using the eight courts after each game.

Getting signed in.

After each game a player from each country team went together to report results. A “win” and a “loss” paper went into the respective USA and Canada cans. Since the same number of paper slips were in both cans, you could not tell by volume who was winning. The winning country would be announced at the 4 PM potluck.

Before dispersing, Barry asked for those still around to gather on court 3 for an overhead drone shot. Maybe next year we can get a drone shot at the start so we have all 80 participants in it.

Gathering for the potluck at 4 PM. (The inside of the MPR would have been a bit crowded for everyone, but it was a convenient alternative for anyone wishing to stay in air conditioning.)

Americans won! This “trophy” is only four years old. The Canadians won the first two years (2019 and 2020). 2021 was cancelled due to Covid, and lack of Canadian in the park. Americans were happy to celebrate having our Canadian friends back with us, and of course finally winning this year!

Perfect dessert for Can-Am competition:

While some of us played more pickleball after the potluck, many stayed outside on the opposite side of the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR) where they continued celebrating friendships. A fire pit was brought out, as was the Fireball–and more Fireball…and more Fireball! A good time was had by all!