September 26, 2023 • 43 mins
Saddle up for a stimulating episode where we converse with Tim Wright, the brain behind the thriving Southlake Paddle Club. Prepare to have your curiosity piqued as we unravel the journey of this booming pickleball club that rose from a casual dinner idea to a 1,200-member powerhouse, synonymous with signature events and a robust member enhancement program. Rest assured, we'll unlock the four-bucket mission that serves as the club's guiding principle, and you'll be hooked on every word.
We'll navigate the many ways the Southlake Paddle Club makes an impact on the pickleball world. From crafting a platform for members to play even when others aren't around, to leveraging cutting-edge technology for effective communication, and fostering a deep sense of community. With Tim and his fellow Board members steering the ship, the club has expanded its ranks and contributed to the community in remarkable ways. But the juicy bit? Well, that's when Tim makes an exhilarating announcement about upcoming membership openings and the club's involvement in three major events, including Southlake Oktoberfest and Carvana PPA National championships in November.
Finally, brace yourself for the big reveal! We'll hear about the club's plans for the MLP style tournament - an event that promises to be an incredible spectacle. This comprehensive conversation with Tim promises to be a blueprint for anyone looking to construct a triumphant club. So tune in, laugh with us, and enrich your understanding of what it takes to run a successful club. We guarantee, it's a hearty blend of inspiration, laughter, and invaluable insights!
Looking for a fitness app specifically designed for Pickleheads? Download the Aim7 app today. Use our url to get a 25% discount and try the app for a free trial before committing. https://www.aim7.com/?via=blazing-paddles
Special thanks to Crown Pickleball for their support and sponsorship! Don't waste money on balls that break, Crown pickleballs rarely crack, are more visible and have a higher spin rate than the competitors.
Use our link to receive a discount on your next purchase! https://crownpickleball.store/blazingpaddles
Have a suggestion for a guest or topic you'd like to see us address?
Hit me up at john@dink.pro or shout out on social:
Instagram
Twitter
Tik Tok
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Yeah.
So it's funny because I do getthis question, or I got the
question a lot more when wefirst started getting sponsors,
like because I would put a bigemail out celebrating GT law or
TO's.
You know, you kind of hearthese rumblings like, well, what
are you going to do with allthat money?
You know, almost like um, areyou going to use that money for
you?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, that's a nice new car Truck, looks nice.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, tristan, I go to Hawaii for a week and it's
all paid for by the club.
No, and you know those are allcommon questions you get and
everything.
But our mission from the verybeginning was to fill four
buckets.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Well, if you weren't already excited now you have to
hang on just to see what thosefour buckets are.
Right, we're talking to TimWright, the architect of the
Southlake Paddle Club, one ofthe founding fathers.
This club has taken on a lifeof its own.
Karen and I are obviouslymembers, but it's over 1200
members.
It's got some real specialtraits to it.
It's involved in a lot ofthings outside of what you might
(01:05):
think are just pickleballactivities.
Tim's a big picture guy and hehad big big plans for the club.
We're going to hear all aboutit.
We're involved in a lot comingup here this fall.
So thank you for stickingaround.
Episode two, season one BlazingPaddles Saddle up.
Glad you did.
How are you, buddy?
(01:26):
I'm good how you guys doing,doing great, and we're here with
Tim again.
He was in one of the lastpodcasts of the old iteration of
this, which was HR Hardball,and again this was probably an
indicator that that was notgoing to be the format much
longer, because all we did wastalk pickleball.
Tim is one of the founders ofthe Southlake Paddle Club 1200
members strong, and only at thatlevel because you had to
(01:50):
actually put a cap on it.
Now this place is pickleballcrazy.
Just looking at what's comingup ahead, there are three pretty
big events coming in October.
We have October Fests, wherewe're going to be participating
with Southlake Paddle Club andseveral other people to put on
an event.
In October Fests you have theMLP style tournament that the
Southlake Paddle Club is puttingon, and I'm happy enough to be
(02:13):
participating in that somehowthe work that went into that,
and it's going to be a fantasticevent.
And then what?
In about a month and a half wehave the national championships
coming here right up the roadand farmers branch.
So our little Berg here isblowing up with pickleball stuff
and Southlake Paddle Club isinvolved in all three of those,
because we have a lot of peoplevolunteering at the nationals
(02:33):
too.
So I thought let's bring Tim on.
I think that, if nothing else,you could share a blueprint of
success for people who aretrying to build a club and
pickleball club or not, whateverthe club is you've done some
real special things here and Ithought we'd ask you a little
bit about how it started, whatstarted it and what you're proud
of, what some challenges mightbe, et cetera.
(02:54):
So I'm going to shut up forjust a second, congratulate you
and ask you how did this thingstart?
Because I know you didn'texpect it to be this a year ago?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
No, definitely not.
Well, listen, I'll just kind ofstart off with a little bit of
the story if some of yourlisteners don't know how this
all started.
It was middle of May of 22 andJoe Coneglio and another good
friend of ours we call him thegodfather of the club he's not
really active, but Rob Baldwinwas at the dinner that Joe
(03:26):
Coneglio myself it was a truefire in South Lake Town Square.
We were having dinner withThrill Wives and we had been
playing for probably a good yearat that point.
In fact, that's when we met youup at Bicentennial Yep.
We met Sean Cocher, we met allthese people that were great,
but we never really had anyformalized way of playing with
each other.
So I was sitting there, maybe acouple of cocktails in, and I
(03:49):
said you know, All good ideascame from that.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
They really did without that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I don't know how anything would happen.
So I'm sitting there.
I'm like you know what?
There's got to be a way that Ican still play and you can still
play if I'm out of town or I'msick or I've got other plans.
There's got to be a way to dothis.
And we started to brainstorm.
I'm like, wait a minute, Ithink I've got it.
Why wouldn't we bring acommunity together of people
that are already playingpickable?
Right now, you go to thepickable courts and everybody's
(04:15):
kind of stay into themselves.
Right, we might say hi andhow's it going, but we're not
like putting games together,we're not, you know, competing
against each other.
And I thought, man, that's anopportunity.
Well, you needed a couplethings.
You needed some technology tokind of bring everybody together
, and one of those things wascreating like a like we use sign
(04:36):
up genius, but you could useany program to basically say,
hey, I'm going to play on Mondaynight, I'm signed up, you can
sign up too.
And so that's kind of how thatsign up genius idea started.
But another thing was let'scommunicate.
Right, we don't evencommunicate outside of this
little group of four.
So how do you do that?
Can you do that through text?
Not really.
So we use group me.
Everybody knows group me.
Problem with group me is thatyou can only have so many people
(05:00):
on there before the messagethat you send that's very
important gets pushed to the topand no one sees it anymore.
So we've evolved even fromthere.
Now we use Discord withmultiple channels.
So I say all that because atthe time this was just an idea.
We had no idea what it wouldbecome.
But the one center point ofeverything once we got about 30
(05:22):
people and we thought maybe thiscould be 50 people or 100
people, it was very slow, right.
That first month or two was, Ithink, we had 100 people.
We had a party in Augustcelebrating our 100th member
that joined us.
We all have beers up at CowtownBrewery.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And that was yeah, remember that.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I mean, that felt like oh my gosh who's going to
imagine a hundred?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
people.
Look at all these people.
Yeah, 100.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And we had Josh, what's the guy's name?
He came up to the place a youngkid, he's like 24, 25 years old
, and he was the centurion ohthat's right, that's right.
And we prayed him around thebar and he was the centurion, he
was felt special that night.
We thought you know what?
That's pretty cool.
I don't know, can this get to200 or 300?
(06:12):
And like, nah you know what?
Probably not, or it would takeat least a year to do that.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, I thought we wouldn't have enough room to.
Well, that's the thing, right,you're always concerned about
courts and stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So we got to a point where I was thinking you know
what, if we could just get somegood fundamental points about
our club down and gosh, it'schanged so much.
But I remember thinking tomyself we need to have, we need
to serve the people in our club,we need to take care of them.
And what do they want?
They want organized play.
(06:43):
So we came up with alldifferent types of organized
play.
Of course that's evolved to thepoint we have now where it's
kings and queens and doubleschallenges and singles
challenges.
But at the time there was a lotof open play.
Hey, come on up at seven or youknow five, 30 or seven, let's
do open play.
And then we have thesechallenge plays where when we
(07:06):
did challenge play you did, weused duper and duper was great
in the beginning.
Well, I know you had somepeople have their feet.
I like it, I like duper fromthe very beginning.
And I say all that because wecontinued to listen to everybody
.
We couldn't please everybodybecause there were so many
(07:27):
people coming on so fast, but ifwe could serve them in a way
that listened, we can provide aplace to go.
We're going to do the rightthing as leaders of the club,
and I think that's what was thecatalyst that caught fire,
because the word got out therethat we were doing organized
play and you could just sign upand we were doing some really
cool events outside of going tohappy hours and doing things
(07:53):
like clinics with pros, and wewere ordering balls for our
members and just like we hadthis endless thing of things we
were doing.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
it went into the club Party in the park.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, party in the park Every Friday night.
We'd have 50 people at play andpick a ball and drink some
beers and play some music.
So I could ramble on.
I don't want to keep doing that, but that's just kind of the
thing that sparked it, I thinkin the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
What do you think?
Because it did it kind of wentincremental and I know that we
were part of that first lot ofenroll.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
First wave, yeah, yeah, the first wave.
What do we call it?
We're founding members.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Then it kind of went into hyperdrive and I think the
first 100 founding members.
That's right, man.
A lot of it is had to be.
I mean, what you just describedis great, and I think the club
could have stopped there.
It could have been, that wouldhave been great, it would have
been fun, but I think you had abigger vision than that, because
what we've seen, I mean you'rerunning this much differently
than any other clubs that I canthink of.
(08:53):
One thing that's unique, by theway, is you don't charge the
members.
What's free in this world?
Nothing, nothing is free inthis world.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Except for being a South Lake Battle Club member.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That's amazing, but yet we're still able to do some
things and have some events.
And I mean, you've come up withthis.
Well, I'll let you speak to it,but the members are not at any
cost to be a part of this club.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
That's right.
Yeah, my friends call me crazy,friends that aren't part of
this club.
They're like, ok, you'respending all this time You're
not making any money.
It's not just your friends.
Yeah, there's people inside theclub too, I know.
What are you doing?
You know this is a passionproject for me.
I never thought it would makeme a dollar.
I never went into it with thatthought and I remember telling
(09:38):
Sean and Joe let's do this foras long as we can without
charging anybody and it doesn'tcost the whole lot, right, we
have a sign up geniussubscription.
We've got a mail chipsubscription for sending emails
out.
I mean, it just didn't cost thewhole lot.
And we weren't doing big events.
We were all in the park that weuse is free.
Thanks to Southlake, it's anopen park.
(09:58):
So it got to a point where Idon't know six, seven months in,
and we really started to thinkabout one of our foundational
thoughts, which was giving backto the community.
And how do you do that?
Well, you can pick up alltournaments.
You can actually roll up yoursleeves and go get involved with
community charity nonprofitsthat are in our backyard.
(10:23):
There's a lot of ways to giveback.
We can just give money, we canwrite checks, but we didn't have
any money to do that, right?
So we came up with the idea atthat point we need to do
sponsorship and, karen, you'reon the board.
This took us a while to kind ofget to this point, we thought
let's do bronze, silver and goldsponsorships and charge them
differently, and we'll do coolthings.
And I think I finally came upwith this.
(10:44):
I just said, listen, let's justkeep this really simple,
because the more sponsors thatwe have, the more work it will
be on our board and no one'sgetting paid here and we're
already super busy with ourlives.
So why don't we just keep itreally simple, have one level of
sponsorship?
We finally landed on the termor the word platinum sponsor,
and that was going to be $5,000.
(11:06):
And we sat down multiple timesfiguring out OK, what can we
give a company in Southlake thatthey'll pay $5,000 for?
I mean, we need to give themsome pretty cool stuff, right?
And we put together a prettyneat list.
I won't go through all that.
And then our first sponsor wasJoe Coniglio.
He's the managing partner atGreenberg-Turg in Dallas and
(11:32):
he's like, well, I'll jump in,I'll do it.
And that, basically, was thefirst one.
And then we brought on anorthopedic surgeon group, that's
TOS Orthopedics.
And then we brought on a bankRegional Texas Bank or Texas
Regional Bank, which is MimiTran.
And then we have brought theASAD group on.
(11:54):
This is a real estate group andthat's Kim and Mark Assad.
And then we just recentlybrought a Cures Health, cures
Function Health, which is achiropractic group.
So Karen is our.
You can probably speak to thismore than I can here.
I mean the reason that wesought them out.
It wasn't like a you didn'thave to have like 500
transactions to kind of makeyour money back.
(12:15):
You could just do a fewpotentially, or maybe even one,
and get your money back.
I mean you can speak to that.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Right.
Well, I mean, I think whatwe're offering is they spend
that on magazine ads, right, andyou're sitting there in a
magazine next to your competitor.
We're giving them exclusivemarketing through our club,
through all of our differentcommunication channels.
I mean that's very unique.
And also we, I mean we've Ithink we've gone above and
(12:49):
beyond what we contracted bynaming our events, giving naming
our events after the sponsors.
I love seeing the sponsors comeout to our challenges and
meeting folks and giving theirswag away.
I reviewed some of that today.
That was really cool seeingsome of those videos and, yeah,
(13:12):
it's a really neat way to giveback to, like you said,
community, but you know it alsojust by servicing the businesses
that are in our community rightin that manner.
But you said something weskipped a step because we became
a nonprofit ourselves in orderto be able to do this too.
So it's like I mean it's just awin-win situation for our
sponsors and for our clubbecause our club gets access to
(13:34):
some really cool partners thatwe've made through these
sponsorships.
I mean, it's not like we we'veeven said no to some sponsors,
right, it's not.
It wasn't about the money, itwas about having the right fit
for the club.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, it's really been incredible how it's all
worked out and we have said noto some people, but the people
that we've said yes to, we'vevetted them just like they
vetted us Right.
We didn't wanna just say yes toanybody.
And the folks that we have onboard are just amazing.
They're so supportive and we'vebeen able to leverage that
relationship in many ways.
(14:07):
I mean, we had our big draftparty last Friday night.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I don't know how many people we had up there 50, 60,
I don't think more At least, atleast it was a huge party and I
showed that to what am I saying?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You said that was a Friday, that was a Sunday night,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Sunday night.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah and that was even more amazing, he
had 50 people up there andhaving a draft, an MLP draft,
I'd guarantee 95% of the peoplethere had never played, or even
thought of playing an MLP seven.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I wonder if that even happens anywhere in any
pickleball club.
But that's what so speak, tothe fact of like why we even
went after sponsorships andmoney since we had such low
overhead.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah.
So it's funny, cause I do getthis question, or I got the
question a lot more when wefirst started getting sponsors,
like cause I would put a bigemail out celebrating GTLaw or
TOs.
You know, you kind of hearthese rumblings like well, what
are you going to do with allthat money?
You know almost like are yougoing to?
Is that money for you?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, that's a nice new car and you brought on
vacation.
Your truck looks nice, is thatwhat you do?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Tristan and I are going to Hawaii for a week and
see it's all paid for by theclub.
No, and you know those are allcommon questions you get and
everything.
But our mission from the verybeginning was to fill four
buckets and we tried to conveythis to the club and you know
how it is.
I mean, there's some peoplethat are really connected and
they hear every word we'resaying and there's some that
kind of tune in once a month andthat's fine too.
(15:29):
But really and maybe there'sgoing to be a bunch of members
listening to this and I canexplain it now but there's
really four buckets and this wasalways the plan.
It wasn't like an afterthought,it was just well designed and
one was giving back to ourcommunity Right and and and
helping the community that weare in or just outside of.
That's a big piece of it.
The other bucket is Education.
(15:51):
Now, this is something thatwe're thinking about right now.
We have ideas we've notimplemented yet, but we just
started our sponsorship programhere in the last.
You know, we just got a sponsorlast week or two weeks ago and
then maybe two months beforethat.
So we're going to implementsome educational programs so we
can help Not only peopleunderstand the game of
pickleball, but help people inCommunities where pickleball
(16:14):
might be the difference betweenmaybe them going on the street
or going and having fun at a reccenter to play Pickleball.
Mean that's kind of our vision,right?
We have a lot of cool ideas wehave to implement, but the other
one is Member enhancement.
Now, this is the coolest one,or action to the coolest one.
It's a.
It's a.
It's a great one for ourmembers because, as you said,
john, there's no membership feeand, like this tournament that
(16:36):
we're having Unfortunately can'thave hundreds of people.
We only have 48 players andsome reserves, but none of those
people are going to pay a dimeto play in a three-day event.
Now, if you go out to rock walland you go play in the PPA
Tournament or whatever turn youplay in every day you play, you
know it could be a hundred bucksor 80 bucks.
So for us to give back to ourMembers who aren't even paying,
(17:01):
just to show, show kind of howwe're leaning into them, is
Incredible and it's in.
Like you said, karen, there'snothing out there for free.
I'm so proud that we can dothis for free and guess what?
It's a win-win because they getsomething for free and our
sponsors are Front and centerfor everything that we do.
We put them on a pedestaleverywhere we go.
Now, why do we do that?
(17:22):
It's because, well, they'rethey deserve it, because they
paid the $5,000.
But we believe in them and webelieve that why would you want
to go just look up on Google anorthopedic surgeon or a real
estate agent, when you havesomeone that you already have an
in with the love of the game ofpickleball right and their
(17:42):
connection to our club?
So I'm not saying there's noforce.
You know you have to useanybody, but why wouldn't you
just step into it and say, let'sgo check it out first, and and
I'll talk about our first lookprogram here in a Little bit,
but that's kind of how that thatsecond step was our first look
program, but that's why we we doit.
So it's a win-win for ourmembers because they get that,
and then to win for the sponsors.
The fourth bucket is ouroperational costs, which still
(18:05):
are fairly minimal.
But you know we'll buy thingslike our tents to, you know,
help with sunshade, and we'llbuy.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Stickers and yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
It's minimal stuff, it's not like we're going out
and going crazy, but it createsa brand, because without all
those things it's kind of toughto create a brand.
Our website you know that's abrand Southwick Paddle Club.
If you've ever gone to that, goto Southwick Paddle Club
commons.
A bunch of cool stuff there, soyou know that's it, that's
that's pretty much it I mean interms of what we're doing with
(18:40):
those, with those funds, andwe're excited about what we're
still gonna do with those funds.
It's a 25 that we've got fivesponsors, twenty five thousand
dollar Budget and we're gonna dosome really cool stuff with
that, not including me going onvacation with any of that money.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah and so building a brand who's this and who's
this in our tent at.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Is it that's?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
an elite waters and Ben Johns only the top players
in the world hanging out.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
The camera.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
You know, you know who those two are, are they?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
are they good?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
no I think I could take her.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Well, all right.
So what was the actual foundingdate, Tim, do you know?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
it was June 1st, june 1st 22 okay so you had the
first birthday.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I know that we were trying to plan to have like a
big birthday bash, but thenSatan went and made it 108
degrees every day here all allsummer.
So I know, we'll end up doingthat, that's so.
You know, 14, 15 ish months,you've accomplished quite a bit.
Karen mentioned, you know,non-profit.
The membership is at 1200.
You had to cap it several timesand then have open enrollment.
(19:55):
You've got tournaments, you'vegot sponsors, got a lot you
could be proud of.
Can you pick one thing that youmight be most proud of that we
haven't already discussed?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, it's, it's not.
It's more intangible, I wouldsay, and it really fires me up
every day that I think about itand it's the community that we
built.
I'll tell you a quick story.
We there's a lot of storieslike this, I'll just pick one.
But I was talking to a gentlemanin our club this has just been
a few months ago and he pulledme aside and he said you know,
(20:28):
it's really interesting becausemy kids, you know, left the
house, you know going to school,they're growing up, they're all
back.
It's my wife and I, but all ofour kids, for the most part,
were based around kids, sportsand maybe some work stuff.
But as that goes, so does someof your friends.
Right, like, you're not astight with the friends because
you're not going to the baseballparties and the football
(20:48):
parties and all that and and and.
So he tells me he's like youknow what my friend group kind
of shrunk down is.
Maybe it was like three to fivefriends that I really had, that
I was really close with.
And this, this club, haschanged everything.
Like I've got 2030, 40 friendsthat I'm hanging out with all
(21:09):
the time.
We're not only playingpickleball, we're doing stuff
outside of pickleball, we'redoing tournaments together,
we're traveling together andit's complete.
It's the exact words.
It completely changed my life.
And like and you hear, and youguys hear these stories too.
I mean, I hear stories likethis all the time and that, to
me, makes it all worthwhile,because if we can serve others
(21:33):
in our lifetime to make otherlives better, that's what it's
all about.
Right, it's not all about me,it's about what can I do to help
your life Improve.
And I know for a fact 100%, andI'm not taking all the credit
there's been a lot of peopleinvolved Joe and Sean and all of
our directors and our board,karen and Marcus and Karen
(21:53):
Bussle and Larissa and the newand just all these we have like
30 or 40 core members have beenhere from the very beginning.
John, you're included in that,and it's like it's an amazing
group with.
If it weren't for all, 30, 40,50, we wouldn't have this
accomplishment.
But that's the one thing I'mthe most proud of that we've
been able to build a communitythat is really bonded in so many
(22:14):
ways.
And I will say this if there'sone challenge that I would say,
it's getting more people to buyinto this group.
It's not a cult or anythinglike that, but just buy into
what we're trying to do here.
Pay attention, listen to whatwe're doing, get engaged on
Discord.
There's so much cool stuffgoing on on Discord.
(22:35):
Join a tournament, do a charityevent at Chicken and Pickle
with us.
I mean, there's just like youknow.
Read our emails there's so muchgoing on.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
We only have a 60% over right.
Come on people.
Well, here's in part of it.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I understand your frustration, but you know it's
the Pareto principle right.
I mean, 20% of the people aregonna do 80% of the stuff, and I
think that that holds true withthis too.
I do think that more peoplecould be getting more out of it,
and I think you know the otherGod.
I said there was three bigthings.
Four big things because we haveour courts finally opening here
, a brand new pickleball centerhere in Southlake which will
(23:11):
actually have nine dedicatedpickleball courts.
I think that might, you know,kickstart a lot more members
being active as well, becauseone of the challenges we have is
you are very aware of is wedon't have much in the way of
courts, which causes challengesthe more popular sport gets,
because we're not the only onestrying to get those courts.
So I know that's been achallenge here recently too.
(23:33):
I don't know if you are gonnaspeak to that, but we I think
that's another thing that showskind of the character of the
club and the direction that wehave is, we know there's gonna
be times when there's gonna becompetition for these public
courts and they are publiccourts.
We could get eight people onone court and sometimes they'll
have two tennis players that goup there and just wanna hit the
(23:53):
ball back and forth, and youknow what?
We just have to tip our hat andbe polite and share, and it you
know it grinds my gears and Iknow it doesn't have a few other
people too.
but you know, they're not ourcourts, and soon we will have
our courts, and I think thatmight make a big difference too.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, we'll see how that all plays out with the
operational plan in Southlake.
I mean our club will definitelyget use out of that, but I
still foresee us playing a lotup on the hill based on how
they're gonna operate that.
I had a great conversation lastweek with Eric Clay, who's the
new manager there.
(24:31):
I never met him we're gonnahave lunch at some point here
and just seems like a reallygreat guy.
He's got some really good ideasand so I look forward to, you
know, having a relationship withthose guys.
Sean Cornelius is thecoordinator along with Eric, and
so you know we'll see how thatall plays out.
But to the court availabilitypiece, I say that you know, if
(24:56):
you're listening and you're partof our club especially, there's
no doubt we get frustrated.
But I would say let's just addsome perspective into all this,
because when you go to mostplaces, especially now with the
growth of the game, you're gonnaplay one game and you're gonna
maybe sit for a couple.
Especially you don't get anopen play event.
What I'm proud about our clubis when we have our scheduled
(25:17):
events.
It's doubles challenge 4.0,which is a TOS orthopedics night
.
By the way, on Thursdays Everyone of our key events has a
sponsored name to it, but whenyou come to that, you're gonna
play five straight games.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Right, and you're gonna when you play King and
Queen.
You know we like to get fourcourts but if we get three
you're gonna play three games,sit one game.
So overall I don't think that'stoo bad right, and as time goes
on there'll be more courts inthe community, in the cities,
and we'll be better.
But you know there's no reasonto get too upset about all of
(25:57):
that.
Let's work with people andlet's you know.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
We've been a little spoiled.
I mean, I started going tochicken and pickle open play.
I used to go to wagon wheelopen play right and you sit.
That's part of it.
Here we have an organized playwhere you are not only it's a
different style, then you'll getan open play right, but you get
(26:21):
recognized as being a winner.
You're.
We're doing these cute videosnow for the winners.
They do a little video andwe're putting them on our
socials and it's just gettingbetter and better.
Man, that's like theircreativity.
I love the one with Allison theother day like proofing and what
you're doing with them to, like, doctor them up, and so we can
(26:41):
go with the theme and it's got asong.
It's just really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I don't know, can you see this?
Probably can't see it, it'sprobably not worth showing, but
like it's something.
This is another part of thecommunity piece that I'm really
excited about, because peopleare really getting into these
championship.
You know videos, yeah, at theend of the night, like you said,
people will kind of just take aminute, figure out what they're
going to do, and some arepretty lame, you know, but some
are really awesome and like it.
(27:07):
Like I don't know if you caneven see this one, but let's
just play it Come on which onewas it?
Anybody can't even hear it.
Can you hear it, the one thatDerrick's going down?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh, yeah, oh yeah we can see it Nobody had bad breath
.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yes, I mean just you know, he goes down, he goes down
.
Robert comes over, tries tosave his life.
He's got that breath.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I mean, that's coordination, that's like it.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Well see, that's what you should do with it.
Have some fun with it.
Yeah, I think there's a lot ofpressure on some people to get
up there.
Maybe they weren't planning towin, but they're like I got
nothing, so you know it's alwaysgood to have one in your back
pocket.
You never know what.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, Go there Like like Allison, I got to get props
to Allison.
I mean, every time she winsshe's I don't know she's
thinking about the stuff whereshe gets there.
But here she is, she's puttingon the makeup, she's looking all
pretty, getting ready for anautograph session, and then look
at this, and then she comesdown and there she's going to do
some autographs.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I mean it was so good .
It was so good.
I was like that's brilliant.
I posted that one today onFacebook I was just laughing and
laughing.
I was like it's so good, that'sso good so you know, listen, we
work hard.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
We, you know, have families, we have relationships
with our spouses and all thatstuff.
It's just a great way to getaway and kind of break free from
your normal everyday lives, andI think people are finding a
gear coming out to play in ourclub that they just haven't
found before.
I mean, they're just having agreat time and I don't know, I
(28:41):
just that's that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, oh super.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, we've well, yeah, so.
Tim, here's the magic questionbecause you know we're in a town
of what?
26,000 people or something.
You have 1200 members in theSouth Lake Paddle Club and we're
capped.
How do we, how do you become amember if you wanted to become a
member, since we don't haveopen enrollment?
Speaker 1 (29:05):
So one of the challenges that we have right
now is obviously courts, but Iview that as an opportunity.
So I've been working with otherplaces that have courts around
to try to open things up.
So maybe what we're going tosee in the future is we're going
to see and I'm just throwingout places right On a Tuesday
(29:27):
night, you may have two eventsat Bicentennial and then you
might have two events someplaceelse that we have access to Now
the challenge with going on theplace.
They want to charge, right, andthen we say we don't charge.
So we have to figure out howwe're going to work through that
.
Even in our own facility downthe hill with those nine courts
being built, that's not a freefacility.
(29:48):
That's going to be the TajMahal is not free.
We're going to have to pay ourway to play in that place.
So how do you do that?
Do we end up charging a fee?
How do we do that?
There's a lot of questions wehave to work through, but we do
know that there are people wehave a lot of.
We gained a lot of respect fromplaces in neighboring
(30:10):
communities and other facilitieslike Hackberry or Lifetime, and
they're looking at us going wow, we could use some of their
business.
So let's open our doors andmaybe we can have some of their
events at our place.
Right, we could have never donethat before, but now they're
like going well, these guys arethe real deal.
(30:31):
We're actually up to 1265members now.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Is that the number 1265?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, 1265.
So it's one of those thingswhere it's just kind of going to
take care of itself, I think,and then when the nine courts
open up, we're going to be okaythere too.
But I'm excited we're workingon a plan right now to bring
back skills and drills for themembers that want that.
That was a super popular thingthat we did on the back of the
day and we just didn't have thecourts.
(30:57):
Well, hopefully we'll get somecourts that will be able to do
that, Maybe start off everyother week and then do it every
week, and we'll have.
We have three or four right nowcertified instructors within
our club that would basicallythat have already said they
would step up and do that.
Now.
There would be a cost for ourmembers, Wouldn't be a whole lot
(31:19):
, but they would step up and dothe instruction.
I was doing that instructionevery week myself for a long
time and I loved it.
But you know I was kind ofspread thin.
So that's just little thingsthat were just continue to add
the tournament that's coming up,the MLP tournament.
That's going to be huge withHackberry.
Then we have our final onSunday, October 22nd at Shicken
(31:40):
and Pickle.
Ice Shaker is going to be thesponsor, the center court
sponsor, for that.
So yeah, we're just, we're just.
There's kind of endless onthings that we can do with this
thing.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Are you going to open up membership anytime again,
because I know I've had peopleask.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So I wanted to.
I have a special announcementthat I was going to.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Writing news.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah, I haven't even shared this with the board,
although I have kind of talkedabout it, and it's something
that I felt for a while that weneed to do, especially to maybe
release some of that pressure upat Bicentennial.
So you ready for the big news?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Okay, I'm not going to talk to when we're going to
open the club's membership up asa whole.
People that are listening mightknow we do things very
different there.
We have enrollment windowsevery two to three months and we
do it for five days, and thereason we do that is there's a
lot of work to be done in thosefive days, and so we'd rather
(32:35):
just cram all that work intothose five days versus having it
open all the time.
And the last time we did this,which was in July, we added 550
new members to our club.
That's crazy.
I thought it'd be like 300 andthat kind of blew.
That blew the wall, the wordsjust out there, right, you got
to join the club, got to jointhe club and it doesn't hurt
that, it's free.
So here's the other thing.
(32:56):
So what I thought we should dois for anybody in Southlake,
okay, and there's a way thatthey're going to prove that
anybody in Southlake, effectiveOctober 1st, will no longer have
to wait to be a member of theclub.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Okay, all right Okay.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
So if you want to join, you would join just like
everybody else.
You go toSouthlakepaddleclubcom, go to
members, click on the greenbutton, fill out the form that
comes to us and we process yourmembership.
And really what that means isthere's a welcoming email that
you get and you get set up onSignUp Genius and you get set up
on Discord, which is ourcommunication platform.
(33:37):
Okay, so we're going to do thatOctober 1st.
What we're going to do there iswe're not going to open it up
for people outside of Southlakeuntil our next enrollment window
, and at this point that'sprobably going to be November.
You know we're already intoOctober here and a few more, a
(33:59):
few, a couple more weeks, lessthan a couple of weeks, and
we'll probably do that end ofOctober, early November, which
should coincide with the openingof the new facility, the Taj
Mahal.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
The Taj Mahal pickleball.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
And we'll have the Nationals right after that,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Are you playing in Nationals Tim?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I'm not Okay, no.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I didn't make the cut in the last tournament that I
played in.
That could have gotten mygolden ticket.
And then I've got a little bitof a knee issue that I'm playing
like once a week, twice a week,trying to get back into it.
But no, I'm not, I'm notplaying.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Well, you know, you can still go without having a.
Apparently they they opened itback up.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, is that still lottery based?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
I don't think so.
I just, for some reason, I'mthinking that they didn't get
the.
It's not full.
But I don't know I could be,let me double, let me fact check
myself.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Do a full fact check.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, no, I may be so , and you know what I might
still do that A part of me hasjust been a little bit on the
sideline here with my knees, soI haven't really thought a whole
lot about it, honestly.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Right, right, the pickleball injuries.
They do, they do challenges.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Tim.
I played this morning withAllison and Mary Reiniac, me and
Tess against them.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
They want me to check their games and I am sitting on
ice right now.
She was literally sitting onice.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I literally what happened out there?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
They destroyed me.
They destroyed me, they had me.
I have a new nickname.
It went from okay, I was thewall, then what was I?
The Tasmanian Devil, thenLittle Monster, and now Allison
gave me the nickname of DuckDuck.
You know what Duck Duck is?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Duck, duck.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
You know when you go to a shooting gallery and that
was ducks like or they're herethen they're there, then they're
there, then they're there andyou gotta take them down.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Are you the?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
one shooting or the one ducking.
I was the duck runningeverywhere and getting
everything she's like you areeverywhere, and you know,
because of course I can't let astinkin' ball go.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Drives me nuts to let a ball go, so I was all over
the place this morning.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
I am.
I am literally.
I told John, when this is over,I'm done, I'm going to go sit
in bed.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Well, when is it over for you?
You play, you're like, at sevenleagues.
You play at seven leagues.
Four leagues.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
This is their schedule.
So Friday morning driving toBrookhaven for a TCD league.
Friday night we're playingmixed TCD.
Saturday morning getting upplaying mixed league.
Sunday night playing thatmakeup from in McKinney that you
(36:43):
know that rain out.
So Sunday night You're leavingone out.
Oh, I am.
What is it?
Freaking Bruce Reath recruitedyou as a sub Bruce.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Reath.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
He advanced to us for our MLP practice match Saturday
oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Okay, so Saturday morning, so two times on Friday,
saturday morning, saturdayafternoon I'm practicing with
Bruce's team for against John,and then Sunday evening going to
McKinney for the makeup sessionand then Monday morning with a
couple of the girls that youknow we're doing some high level
like just training play.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I mean I'm sick.
Do you even?
I mean right about burnout,because that seems like you're
on the verge of burnout.
Let us be honest.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
No, I'm not, because it just I'm getting better and
better.
I mean I think even thismorning you know it was even
though it was tough.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
We.
I mean I had to really thinkquick and I mean I wasn't, it
wasn't like it was, I wasgetting destroyed.
So I mean that's a lot ofgrowth from from where I was.
Yeah, you know yeah, that'sgood.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Hey, quick change of subject.
But along those same lines,what do you guys think about the
SBC MLP matchups on Friday,saturday and Sunday, those spots
, is that you think people aregoing to fill those up?
I mean, you guys are goingoutside of those, it seems like
on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Well, we had to because of previous commitments,
but I think it's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, ok, good, so you think it's going to work.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, have they.
Have people signed up?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
We're going to play on Sunday, the news team and
then the race team that I'm onwe're playing on Sunday
afternoon, so I think we're theonly ones signed up so far.
But again, again, I hope that alot of the members are going to
listen to this.
If you're on a team an MLP teamI didn't do the math, but
there's a ton of spots, a ton ofopportunities you could play
(38:36):
before you actually play inOctober.
And just speaking from lastyear, that would have been an
awesome thing, like we practiceda couple of times, but once we
got to the games, john, you wereon my team, right?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
We didn't play games before that Did we no yeah.
No, no so think about whatcould have happened, John, if we
played some games.
I think about it every freakingnight, Tim.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
You know, you're on the right side with that left
lefty forehand and I'm on theleft side with the righty
forehand.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
I mean, that was quite a it would have been
special.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Well, what do we make ?
We have?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
12 teams.
I think we were fifth orsomething, were we?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
I was our fourth, I want to say, I'll say fourth
yeah that sounds good.
I'll say fourth so big timeshere in pickleball, not only
with the club but withOctoberfest, with the MLP
tournament, with the nationalpickleball center.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Well, you got to explain what Octoberfest is yeah
, let's break that down If wehad a couple of minutes here,
right, let's go ahead, go ahead.
So we're.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
This is for the people listening.
The the chamber has this annualOctoberfest.
It's number one in the state OfTexas by I don't know who rates
.
I think that's kind of funnythat there's a actual system Is
(39:51):
that most beer consumed as ahousework.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I don't know, like, what's the criteria for that?
Speaker 3 (39:56):
But number in the top five in the country, apparently
, and so they were looking fornew ways to entertain people.
And one, a friend of ours who,who runs the Wiener dog races
for Octoberfest, is how aboutpickleball?
And do I have the right forthat?
So next thing, you know, we'remeeting with the chamber and and
what turned into hey, can youdo something Saturday, sunday
(40:18):
afternoon, as I'm hearing himtalk and he's like you know, we
need something that's going toentertain people, keep people
there.
And I'm like well, nothing'smore entertaining than
pickleball, of course.
Why not run pickleball thewhole time?
Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,walk out 20, seven hours of
pickleball.
So we purchased a pickle roll.
We're going to have it in SouthLake Town Square.
(40:38):
This is the first of its kind Ithink that I've ever heard of.
Certainly I haven't heard ofanything like this in the area.
I mean, I think they've donetried to do like some kind of
you know clinics or justteaching kids, but but on like
chalking off the street, right.
So we're actually purchased apickle roll, we're bringing it
(40:59):
in.
That's that, if for anyonewho's listening to this.
You know we're going to betalking about it in.
That's that.
If for anyone listening topickle roll and you don't know
what that is, it's what the PPAuses when they do these events.
In fact they're they're crazybusy right now setting up for
the nationals that's coming hereat Brookhaven.
I didn't realize that they wereactually using those courts for
for these tournaments, but theydo, and so we'll have an actual
(41:23):
court and we're going to haveexhibition matches and just high
level matches.
And when I say exhibition, it'sgoing to be like South Lake and
South Lake City Council versusour neighboring Keller City
Council, or we're actually goingto have a special locked in yet
(41:43):
, but it's getting there.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I'm pretty sure we're working on it.
Well, but that's that's thetype of thing we're talking
about Right.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
That's the idea is to do something that's going to
maybe place fire right.
We're working on that to see ifwe can tee that up.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
So yeah, even most importantly, we're going to have
some South Lake paddle clubMembers that are going to be out
there playing.
I think that the announcementwent out today.
Today is Wednesday, the 20th,and there's four different ways
you can participate you can be aplayer, you can be a volunteer,
you can be a sponsor, you canhave your naming rights to one
of the matches, you can be avendor.
(42:17):
So we do have a 20 by 10 tentgoing to be court side.
We've already talked to severalpeople.
We've locked down some of thespaces already and there's over
100,000 people that'll walkthrough those little streets in
downtown South Lake over a threeday period.
So we will have moreinformation about that.
This is going to be first class.
This is not chalk on the street.
(42:38):
It's going to be a first classpickleball event.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
My hat is off to the two of you because the
dedication to this game ofpickleball I don't know if
there's a couple in our city Infact there's not, let's be
honest that is dedicated to thisgame and doing the things you
guys are doing, and it's easy topartner with you guys because
you're all in pickleball, right.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
So my hat's off to you guys.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
My hat's off.
You've got Dig Pro.
You know what Great merchandiseI know.
You've got the pickleballbusiness that's just about to
start, so corporations couldbasically have events that they
can participate and bring theiremployees out to play.
What a great concept that is.
So my hat's off to you guys.
Yeah.
So it's funny because I do getthis question, or I got the
question a lot more when wefirst started getting sponsors,
like because I would put a bigemail out celebrating GT law or
TO's.
You know, you kind of hearthese rumblings like, well, what
are you going to do with allthat money?
You know, almost like um, areyou going to use that money for
you?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, that's a nice new car Truck, looks nice.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, tristan, I go to Hawaii for a week and it's
all paid for by the club.
No, and you know those are allcommon questions you get and
everything.
But our mission from the verybeginning was to fill four
buckets.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Well, if you weren't already excited now you have to
hang on just to see what thosefour buckets are.
Right, we're talking to TimWright, the architect of the
Southlake Paddle Club, one ofthe founding fathers.
This club has taken on a lifeof its own.
Karen and I are obviouslymembers, but it's over 1200
members.
It's got some real specialtraits to it.
It's involved in a lot ofthings outside of what you might
(01:05):
think are just pickleballactivities.
Tim's a big picture guy and hehad big big plans for the club.
We're going to hear all aboutit.
We're involved in a lot comingup here this fall.
So thank you for stickingaround.
Episode two, season one BlazingPaddles Saddle up.
Glad you did.
How are you, buddy?
(01:26):
I'm good how you guys doing,doing great, and we're here with
Tim again.
He was in one of the lastpodcasts of the old iteration of
this, which was HR Hardball,and again this was probably an
indicator that that was notgoing to be the format much
longer, because all we did wastalk pickleball.
Tim is one of the founders ofthe Southlake Paddle Club 1200
members strong, and only at thatlevel because you had to
(01:50):
actually put a cap on it.
Now this place is pickleballcrazy.
Just looking at what's comingup ahead, there are three pretty
big events coming in October.
We have October Fests, wherewe're going to be participating
with Southlake Paddle Club andseveral other people to put on
an event.
In October Fests you have theMLP style tournament that the
Southlake Paddle Club is puttingon, and I'm happy enough to be
(02:13):
participating in that somehowthe work that went into that,
and it's going to be a fantasticevent.
And then what?
In about a month and a half wehave the national championships
coming here right up the roadand farmers branch.
So our little Berg here isblowing up with pickleball stuff
and Southlake Paddle Club isinvolved in all three of those,
because we have a lot of peoplevolunteering at the nationals
(02:33):
too.
So I thought let's bring Tim on.
I think that, if nothing else,you could share a blueprint of
success for people who aretrying to build a club and
pickleball club or not, whateverthe club is you've done some
real special things here and Ithought we'd ask you a little
bit about how it started, whatstarted it and what you're proud
of, what some challenges mightbe, et cetera.
(02:54):
So I'm going to shut up forjust a second, congratulate you
and ask you how did this thingstart?
Because I know you didn'texpect it to be this a year ago?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
No, definitely not.
Well, listen, I'll just kind ofstart off with a little bit of
the story if some of yourlisteners don't know how this
all started.
It was middle of May of 22 andJoe Coneglio and another good
friend of ours we call him thegodfather of the club he's not
really active, but Rob Baldwinwas at the dinner that Joe
(03:26):
Coneglio myself it was a truefire in South Lake Town Square.
We were having dinner withThrill Wives and we had been
playing for probably a good yearat that point.
In fact, that's when we met youup at Bicentennial Yep.
We met Sean Cocher, we met allthese people that were great,
but we never really had anyformalized way of playing with
each other.
So I was sitting there, maybe acouple of cocktails in, and I
(03:49):
said you know, All good ideascame from that.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
They really did without that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I don't know how anything would happen.
So I'm sitting there.
I'm like you know what?
There's got to be a way that Ican still play and you can still
play if I'm out of town or I'msick or I've got other plans.
There's got to be a way to dothis.
And we started to brainstorm.
I'm like, wait a minute, Ithink I've got it.
Why wouldn't we bring acommunity together of people
that are already playingpickable?
Right now, you go to thepickable courts and everybody's
(04:15):
kind of stay into themselves.
Right, we might say hi andhow's it going, but we're not
like putting games together,we're not, you know, competing
against each other.
And I thought, man, that's anopportunity.
Well, you needed a couplethings.
You needed some technology tokind of bring everybody together
, and one of those things wascreating like a like we use sign
(04:36):
up genius, but you could useany program to basically say,
hey, I'm going to play on Mondaynight, I'm signed up, you can
sign up too.
And so that's kind of how thatsign up genius idea started.
But another thing was let'scommunicate.
Right, we don't evencommunicate outside of this
little group of four.
So how do you do that?
Can you do that through text?
Not really.
So we use group me.
Everybody knows group me.
Problem with group me is thatyou can only have so many people
(05:00):
on there before the messagethat you send that's very
important gets pushed to the topand no one sees it anymore.
So we've evolved even fromthere.
Now we use Discord withmultiple channels.
So I say all that because atthe time this was just an idea.
We had no idea what it wouldbecome.
But the one center point ofeverything once we got about 30
(05:22):
people and we thought maybe thiscould be 50 people or 100
people, it was very slow, right.
That first month or two was, Ithink, we had 100 people.
We had a party in Augustcelebrating our 100th member
that joined us.
We all have beers up at CowtownBrewery.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And that was yeah, remember that.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I mean, that felt like oh my gosh who's going to
imagine a hundred?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
people.
Look at all these people.
Yeah, 100.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And we had Josh, what's the guy's name?
He came up to the place a youngkid, he's like 24, 25 years old
, and he was the centurion ohthat's right, that's right.
And we prayed him around thebar and he was the centurion, he
was felt special that night.
We thought you know what?
That's pretty cool.
I don't know, can this get to200 or 300?
(06:12):
And like, nah you know what?
Probably not, or it would takeat least a year to do that.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, I thought we wouldn't have enough room to.
Well, that's the thing, right,you're always concerned about
courts and stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So we got to a point where I was thinking you know
what, if we could just get somegood fundamental points about
our club down and gosh, it'schanged so much.
But I remember thinking tomyself we need to have, we need
to serve the people in our club,we need to take care of them.
And what do they want?
They want organized play.
(06:43):
So we came up with alldifferent types of organized
play.
Of course that's evolved to thepoint we have now where it's
kings and queens and doubleschallenges and singles
challenges.
But at the time there was a lotof open play.
Hey, come on up at seven or youknow five, 30 or seven, let's
do open play.
And then we have thesechallenge plays where when we
(07:06):
did challenge play you did, weused duper and duper was great
in the beginning.
Well, I know you had somepeople have their feet.
I like it, I like duper fromthe very beginning.
And I say all that because wecontinued to listen to everybody
.
We couldn't please everybodybecause there were so many
(07:27):
people coming on so fast, but ifwe could serve them in a way
that listened, we can provide aplace to go.
We're going to do the rightthing as leaders of the club,
and I think that's what was thecatalyst that caught fire,
because the word got out therethat we were doing organized
play and you could just sign upand we were doing some really
cool events outside of going tohappy hours and doing things
(07:53):
like clinics with pros, and wewere ordering balls for our
members and just like we hadthis endless thing of things we
were doing.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
it went into the club Party in the park.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, party in the park Every Friday night.
We'd have 50 people at play andpick a ball and drink some
beers and play some music.
So I could ramble on.
I don't want to keep doing that, but that's just kind of the
thing that sparked it, I thinkin the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
What do you think?
Because it did it kind of wentincremental and I know that we
were part of that first lot ofenroll.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
First wave, yeah, yeah, the first wave.
What do we call it?
We're founding members.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Then it kind of went into hyperdrive and I think the
first 100 founding members.
That's right, man.
A lot of it is had to be.
I mean, what you just describedis great, and I think the club
could have stopped there.
It could have been, that wouldhave been great, it would have
been fun, but I think you had abigger vision than that, because
what we've seen, I mean you'rerunning this much differently
than any other clubs that I canthink of.
(08:53):
One thing that's unique, by theway, is you don't charge the
members.
What's free in this world?
Nothing, nothing is free inthis world.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Except for being a South Lake Battle Club member.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That's amazing, but yet we're still able to do some
things and have some events.
And I mean, you've come up withthis.
Well, I'll let you speak to it,but the members are not at any
cost to be a part of this club.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
That's right.
Yeah, my friends call me crazy,friends that aren't part of
this club.
They're like, ok, you'respending all this time You're
not making any money.
It's not just your friends.
Yeah, there's people inside theclub too, I know.
What are you doing?
You know this is a passionproject for me.
I never thought it would makeme a dollar.
I never went into it with thatthought and I remember telling
(09:38):
Sean and Joe let's do this foras long as we can without
charging anybody and it doesn'tcost the whole lot, right, we
have a sign up geniussubscription.
We've got a mail chipsubscription for sending emails
out.
I mean, it just didn't cost thewhole lot.
And we weren't doing big events.
We were all in the park that weuse is free.
Thanks to Southlake, it's anopen park.
(09:58):
So it got to a point where Idon't know six, seven months in,
and we really started to thinkabout one of our foundational
thoughts, which was giving backto the community.
And how do you do that?
Well, you can pick up alltournaments.
You can actually roll up yoursleeves and go get involved with
community charity nonprofitsthat are in our backyard.
(10:23):
There's a lot of ways to giveback.
We can just give money, we canwrite checks, but we didn't have
any money to do that, right?
So we came up with the idea atthat point we need to do
sponsorship and, karen, you'reon the board.
This took us a while to kind ofget to this point, we thought
let's do bronze, silver and goldsponsorships and charge them
differently, and we'll do coolthings.
And I think I finally came upwith this.
(10:44):
I just said, listen, let's justkeep this really simple,
because the more sponsors thatwe have, the more work it will
be on our board and no one'sgetting paid here and we're
already super busy with ourlives.
So why don't we just keep itreally simple, have one level of
sponsorship?
We finally landed on the termor the word platinum sponsor,
and that was going to be $5,000.
(11:06):
And we sat down multiple timesfiguring out OK, what can we
give a company in Southlake thatthey'll pay $5,000 for?
I mean, we need to give themsome pretty cool stuff, right?
And we put together a prettyneat list.
I won't go through all that.
And then our first sponsor wasJoe Coniglio.
He's the managing partner atGreenberg-Turg in Dallas and
(11:32):
he's like, well, I'll jump in,I'll do it.
And that, basically, was thefirst one.
And then we brought on anorthopedic surgeon group, that's
TOS Orthopedics.
And then we brought on a bankRegional Texas Bank or Texas
Regional Bank, which is MimiTran.
And then we have brought theASAD group on.
(11:54):
This is a real estate group andthat's Kim and Mark Assad.
And then we just recentlybrought a Cures Health, cures
Function Health, which is achiropractic group.
So Karen is our.
You can probably speak to thismore than I can here.
I mean the reason that wesought them out.
It wasn't like a you didn'thave to have like 500
transactions to kind of makeyour money back.
(12:15):
You could just do a fewpotentially, or maybe even one,
and get your money back.
I mean you can speak to that.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Right.
Well, I mean, I think whatwe're offering is they spend
that on magazine ads, right, andyou're sitting there in a
magazine next to your competitor.
We're giving them exclusivemarketing through our club,
through all of our differentcommunication channels.
I mean that's very unique.
And also we, I mean we've Ithink we've gone above and
(12:49):
beyond what we contracted bynaming our events, giving naming
our events after the sponsors.
I love seeing the sponsors comeout to our challenges and
meeting folks and giving theirswag away.
I reviewed some of that today.
That was really cool seeingsome of those videos and, yeah,
(13:12):
it's a really neat way to giveback to, like you said,
community, but you know it alsojust by servicing the businesses
that are in our community rightin that manner.
But you said something weskipped a step because we became
a nonprofit ourselves in orderto be able to do this too.
So it's like I mean it's just awin-win situation for our
sponsors and for our clubbecause our club gets access to
(13:34):
some really cool partners thatwe've made through these
sponsorships.
I mean, it's not like we we'veeven said no to some sponsors,
right, it's not.
It wasn't about the money, itwas about having the right fit
for the club.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, it's really been incredible how it's all
worked out and we have said noto some people, but the people
that we've said yes to, we'vevetted them just like they
vetted us Right.
We didn't wanna just say yes toanybody.
And the folks that we have onboard are just amazing.
They're so supportive and we'vebeen able to leverage that
relationship in many ways.
(14:07):
I mean, we had our big draftparty last Friday night.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I don't know how many people we had up there 50, 60,
I don't think more At least, atleast it was a huge party and I
showed that to what am I saying?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You said that was a Friday, that was a Sunday night,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Sunday night.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah and that was even more amazing, he
had 50 people up there andhaving a draft, an MLP draft,
I'd guarantee 95% of the peoplethere had never played, or even
thought of playing an MLP seven.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I wonder if that even happens anywhere in any
pickleball club.
But that's what so speak, tothe fact of like why we even
went after sponsorships andmoney since we had such low
overhead.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah.
So it's funny, cause I do getthis question, or I got the
question a lot more when wefirst started getting sponsors,
like cause I would put a bigemail out celebrating GTLaw or
TOs.
You know, you kind of hearthese rumblings like well, what
are you going to do with allthat money?
You know almost like are yougoing to?
Is that money for you?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, that's a nice new car and you brought on
vacation.
Your truck looks nice, is thatwhat you do?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Tristan and I are going to Hawaii for a week and
see it's all paid for by theclub.
No, and you know those are allcommon questions you get and
everything.
But our mission from the verybeginning was to fill four
buckets and we tried to conveythis to the club and you know
how it is.
I mean, there's some peoplethat are really connected and
they hear every word we'resaying and there's some that
kind of tune in once a month andthat's fine too.
(15:29):
But really and maybe there'sgoing to be a bunch of members
listening to this and I canexplain it now but there's
really four buckets and this wasalways the plan.
It wasn't like an afterthought,it was just well designed and
one was giving back to ourcommunity Right and and and
helping the community that weare in or just outside of.
That's a big piece of it.
The other bucket is Education.
(15:51):
Now, this is something thatwe're thinking about right now.
We have ideas we've notimplemented yet, but we just
started our sponsorship programhere in the last.
You know, we just got a sponsorlast week or two weeks ago and
then maybe two months beforethat.
So we're going to implementsome educational programs so we
can help Not only peopleunderstand the game of
pickleball, but help people inCommunities where pickleball
(16:14):
might be the difference betweenmaybe them going on the street
or going and having fun at a reccenter to play Pickleball.
Mean that's kind of our vision,right?
We have a lot of cool ideas wehave to implement, but the other
one is Member enhancement.
Now, this is the coolest one,or action to the coolest one.
It's a.
It's a.
It's a great one for ourmembers because, as you said,
john, there's no membership feeand, like this tournament that
(16:36):
we're having Unfortunately can'thave hundreds of people.
We only have 48 players andsome reserves, but none of those
people are going to pay a dimeto play in a three-day event.
Now, if you go out to rock walland you go play in the PPA
Tournament or whatever turn youplay in every day you play, you
know it could be a hundred bucksor 80 bucks.
So for us to give back to ourMembers who aren't even paying,
(17:01):
just to show, show kind of howwe're leaning into them, is
Incredible and it's in.
Like you said, karen, there'snothing out there for free.
I'm so proud that we can dothis for free and guess what?
It's a win-win because they getsomething for free and our
sponsors are Front and centerfor everything that we do.
We put them on a pedestaleverywhere we go.
Now, why do we do that?
(17:22):
It's because, well, they'rethey deserve it, because they
paid the $5,000.
But we believe in them and webelieve that why would you want
to go just look up on Google anorthopedic surgeon or a real
estate agent, when you havesomeone that you already have an
in with the love of the game ofpickleball right and their
(17:42):
connection to our club?
So I'm not saying there's noforce.
You know you have to useanybody, but why wouldn't you
just step into it and say, let'sgo check it out first, and and
I'll talk about our first lookprogram here in a Little bit,
but that's kind of how that thatsecond step was our first look
program, but that's why we we doit.
So it's a win-win for ourmembers because they get that,
and then to win for the sponsors.
The fourth bucket is ouroperational costs, which still
(18:05):
are fairly minimal.
But you know we'll buy thingslike our tents to, you know,
help with sunshade, and we'llbuy.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Stickers and yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
It's minimal stuff, it's not like we're going out
and going crazy, but it createsa brand, because without all
those things it's kind of toughto create a brand.
Our website you know that's abrand Southwick Paddle Club.
If you've ever gone to that, goto Southwick Paddle Club
commons.
A bunch of cool stuff there, soyou know that's it, that's
that's pretty much it I mean interms of what we're doing with
(18:40):
those, with those funds, andwe're excited about what we're
still gonna do with those funds.
It's a 25 that we've got fivesponsors, twenty five thousand
dollar Budget and we're gonna dosome really cool stuff with
that, not including me going onvacation with any of that money.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah and so building a brand who's this and who's
this in our tent at.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Is it that's?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
an elite waters and Ben Johns only the top players
in the world hanging out.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
The camera.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
You know, you know who those two are, are they?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
are they good?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
no I think I could take her.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Well, all right.
So what was the actual foundingdate, Tim, do you know?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
it was June 1st, june 1st 22 okay so you had the
first birthday.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I know that we were trying to plan to have like a
big birthday bash, but thenSatan went and made it 108
degrees every day here all allsummer.
So I know, we'll end up doingthat, that's so.
You know, 14, 15 ish months,you've accomplished quite a bit.
Karen mentioned, you know,non-profit.
The membership is at 1200.
You had to cap it several timesand then have open enrollment.
(19:55):
You've got tournaments, you'vegot sponsors, got a lot you
could be proud of.
Can you pick one thing that youmight be most proud of that we
haven't already discussed?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, it's, it's not.
It's more intangible, I wouldsay, and it really fires me up
every day that I think about itand it's the community that we
built.
I'll tell you a quick story.
We there's a lot of storieslike this, I'll just pick one.
But I was talking to a gentlemanin our club this has just been
a few months ago and he pulledme aside and he said you know,
(20:28):
it's really interesting becausemy kids, you know, left the
house, you know going to school,they're growing up, they're all
back.
It's my wife and I, but all ofour kids, for the most part,
were based around kids, sportsand maybe some work stuff.
But as that goes, so does someof your friends.
Right, like, you're not astight with the friends because
you're not going to the baseballparties and the football
(20:48):
parties and all that and and and.
So he tells me he's like youknow what my friend group kind
of shrunk down is.
Maybe it was like three to fivefriends that I really had, that
I was really close with.
And this, this club, haschanged everything.
Like I've got 2030, 40 friendsthat I'm hanging out with all
(21:09):
the time.
We're not only playingpickleball, we're doing stuff
outside of pickleball, we'redoing tournaments together,
we're traveling together andit's complete.
It's the exact words.
It completely changed my life.
And like and you hear, and youguys hear these stories too.
I mean, I hear stories likethis all the time and that, to
me, makes it all worthwhile,because if we can serve others
(21:33):
in our lifetime to make otherlives better, that's what it's
all about.
Right, it's not all about me,it's about what can I do to help
your life Improve.
And I know for a fact 100%, andI'm not taking all the credit
there's been a lot of peopleinvolved Joe and Sean and all of
our directors and our board,karen and Marcus and Karen
(21:53):
Bussle and Larissa and the newand just all these we have like
30 or 40 core members have beenhere from the very beginning.
John, you're included in that,and it's like it's an amazing
group with.
If it weren't for all, 30, 40,50, we wouldn't have this
accomplishment.
But that's the one thing I'mthe most proud of that we've
been able to build a communitythat is really bonded in so many
(22:14):
ways.
And I will say this if there'sone challenge that I would say,
it's getting more people to buyinto this group.
It's not a cult or anythinglike that, but just buy into
what we're trying to do here.
Pay attention, listen to whatwe're doing, get engaged on
Discord.
There's so much cool stuffgoing on on Discord.
(22:35):
Join a tournament, do a charityevent at Chicken and Pickle
with us.
I mean, there's just like youknow.
Read our emails there's so muchgoing on.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
We only have a 60% over right.
Come on people.
Well, here's in part of it.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I understand your frustration, but you know it's
the Pareto principle right.
I mean, 20% of the people aregonna do 80% of the stuff, and I
think that that holds true withthis too.
I do think that more peoplecould be getting more out of it,
and I think you know the otherGod.
I said there was three bigthings.
Four big things because we haveour courts finally opening here
, a brand new pickleball centerhere in Southlake which will
(23:11):
actually have nine dedicatedpickleball courts.
I think that might, you know,kickstart a lot more members
being active as well, becauseone of the challenges we have is
you are very aware of is wedon't have much in the way of
courts, which causes challengesthe more popular sport gets,
because we're not the only onestrying to get those courts.
So I know that's been achallenge here recently too.
(23:33):
I don't know if you are gonnaspeak to that, but we I think
that's another thing that showskind of the character of the
club and the direction that wehave is, we know there's gonna
be times when there's gonna becompetition for these public
courts and they are publiccourts.
We could get eight people onone court and sometimes they'll
have two tennis players that goup there and just wanna hit the
(23:53):
ball back and forth, and youknow what?
We just have to tip our hat andbe polite and share, and it you
know it grinds my gears and Iknow it doesn't have a few other
people too.
but you know, they're not ourcourts, and soon we will have
our courts, and I think thatmight make a big difference too.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, we'll see how that all plays out with the
operational plan in Southlake.
I mean our club will definitelyget use out of that, but I
still foresee us playing a lotup on the hill based on how
they're gonna operate that.
I had a great conversation lastweek with Eric Clay, who's the
new manager there.
(24:31):
I never met him we're gonnahave lunch at some point here
and just seems like a reallygreat guy.
He's got some really good ideasand so I look forward to, you
know, having a relationship withthose guys.
Sean Cornelius is thecoordinator along with Eric, and
so you know we'll see how thatall plays out.
But to the court availabilitypiece, I say that you know, if
(24:56):
you're listening and you're partof our club especially, there's
no doubt we get frustrated.
But I would say let's just addsome perspective into all this,
because when you go to mostplaces, especially now with the
growth of the game, you're gonnaplay one game and you're gonna
maybe sit for a couple.
Especially you don't get anopen play event.
What I'm proud about our clubis when we have our scheduled
(25:17):
events.
It's doubles challenge 4.0,which is a TOS orthopedics night
.
By the way, on Thursdays Everyone of our key events has a
sponsored name to it, but whenyou come to that, you're gonna
play five straight games.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Right, and you're gonna when you play King and
Queen.
You know we like to get fourcourts but if we get three
you're gonna play three games,sit one game.
So overall I don't think that'stoo bad right, and as time goes
on there'll be more courts inthe community, in the cities,
and we'll be better.
But you know there's no reasonto get too upset about all of
(25:57):
that.
Let's work with people andlet's you know.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
We've been a little spoiled.
I mean, I started going tochicken and pickle open play.
I used to go to wagon wheelopen play right and you sit.
That's part of it.
Here we have an organized playwhere you are not only it's a
different style, then you'll getan open play right, but you get
(26:21):
recognized as being a winner.
You're.
We're doing these cute videosnow for the winners.
They do a little video andwe're putting them on our
socials and it's just gettingbetter and better.
Man, that's like theircreativity.
I love the one with Allison theother day like proofing and what
you're doing with them to, like, doctor them up, and so we can
(26:41):
go with the theme and it's got asong.
It's just really cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I don't know, can you see this?
Probably can't see it, it'sprobably not worth showing, but
like it's something.
This is another part of thecommunity piece that I'm really
excited about, because peopleare really getting into these
championship.
You know videos, yeah, at theend of the night, like you said,
people will kind of just take aminute, figure out what they're
going to do, and some arepretty lame, you know, but some
are really awesome and like it.
(27:07):
Like I don't know if you caneven see this one, but let's
just play it Come on which onewas it?
Anybody can't even hear it.
Can you hear it, the one thatDerrick's going down?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh, yeah, oh yeah we can see it Nobody had bad breath
.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yes, I mean just you know, he goes down, he goes down
.
Robert comes over, tries tosave his life.
He's got that breath.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I mean, that's coordination, that's like it.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Well see, that's what you should do with it.
Have some fun with it.
Yeah, I think there's a lot ofpressure on some people to get
up there.
Maybe they weren't planning towin, but they're like I got
nothing, so you know it's alwaysgood to have one in your back
pocket.
You never know what.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, Go there Like like Allison, I got to get props
to Allison.
I mean, every time she winsshe's I don't know she's
thinking about the stuff whereshe gets there.
But here she is, she's puttingon the makeup, she's looking all
pretty, getting ready for anautograph session, and then look
at this, and then she comesdown and there she's going to do
some autographs.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I mean it was so good .
It was so good.
I was like that's brilliant.
I posted that one today onFacebook I was just laughing and
laughing.
I was like it's so good, that'sso good so you know, listen, we
work hard.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
We, you know, have families, we have relationships
with our spouses and all thatstuff.
It's just a great way to getaway and kind of break free from
your normal everyday lives, andI think people are finding a
gear coming out to play in ourclub that they just haven't
found before.
I mean, they're just having agreat time and I don't know, I
(28:41):
just that's that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, oh super.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, we've well, yeah, so.
Tim, here's the magic questionbecause you know we're in a town
of what?
26,000 people or something.
You have 1200 members in theSouth Lake Paddle Club and we're
capped.
How do we, how do you become amember if you wanted to become a
member, since we don't haveopen enrollment?
Speaker 1 (29:05):
So one of the challenges that we have right
now is obviously courts, but Iview that as an opportunity.
So I've been working with otherplaces that have courts around
to try to open things up.
So maybe what we're going tosee in the future is we're going
to see and I'm just throwingout places right On a Tuesday
(29:27):
night, you may have two eventsat Bicentennial and then you
might have two events someplaceelse that we have access to Now
the challenge with going on theplace.
They want to charge, right, andthen we say we don't charge.
So we have to figure out howwe're going to work through that
.
Even in our own facility downthe hill with those nine courts
being built, that's not a freefacility.
(29:48):
That's going to be the TajMahal is not free.
We're going to have to pay ourway to play in that place.
So how do you do that?
Do we end up charging a fee?
How do we do that?
There's a lot of questions wehave to work through, but we do
know that there are people wehave a lot of.
We gained a lot of respect fromplaces in neighboring
(30:10):
communities and other facilitieslike Hackberry or Lifetime, and
they're looking at us going wow, we could use some of their
business.
So let's open our doors andmaybe we can have some of their
events at our place.
Right, we could have never donethat before, but now they're
like going well, these guys arethe real deal.
(30:31):
We're actually up to 1265members now.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Is that the number 1265?
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, 1265.
So it's one of those thingswhere it's just kind of going to
take care of itself, I think,and then when the nine courts
open up, we're going to be okaythere too.
But I'm excited we're workingon a plan right now to bring
back skills and drills for themembers that want that.
That was a super popular thingthat we did on the back of the
day and we just didn't have thecourts.
(30:57):
Well, hopefully we'll get somecourts that will be able to do
that, Maybe start off everyother week and then do it every
week, and we'll have.
We have three or four right nowcertified instructors within
our club that would basicallythat have already said they
would step up and do that.
Now.
There would be a cost for ourmembers, Wouldn't be a whole lot
(31:19):
, but they would step up and dothe instruction.
I was doing that instructionevery week myself for a long
time and I loved it.
But you know I was kind ofspread thin.
So that's just little thingsthat were just continue to add
the tournament that's coming up,the MLP tournament.
That's going to be huge withHackberry.
Then we have our final onSunday, October 22nd at Shicken
(31:40):
and Pickle.
Ice Shaker is going to be thesponsor, the center court
sponsor, for that.
So yeah, we're just, we're just.
There's kind of endless onthings that we can do with this
thing.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Are you going to open up membership anytime again,
because I know I've had peopleask.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
So I wanted to.
I have a special announcementthat I was going to.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Writing news.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah, I haven't even shared this with the board,
although I have kind of talkedabout it, and it's something
that I felt for a while that weneed to do, especially to maybe
release some of that pressure upat Bicentennial.
So you ready for the big news?
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Okay, I'm not going to talk to when we're going to
open the club's membership up asa whole.
People that are listening mightknow we do things very
different there.
We have enrollment windowsevery two to three months and we
do it for five days, and thereason we do that is there's a
lot of work to be done in thosefive days, and so we'd rather
(32:35):
just cram all that work intothose five days versus having it
open all the time.
And the last time we did this,which was in July, we added 550
new members to our club.
That's crazy.
I thought it'd be like 300 andthat kind of blew.
That blew the wall, the wordsjust out there, right, you got
to join the club, got to jointhe club and it doesn't hurt
that, it's free.
So here's the other thing.
(32:56):
So what I thought we should dois for anybody in Southlake,
okay, and there's a way thatthey're going to prove that
anybody in Southlake, effectiveOctober 1st, will no longer have
to wait to be a member of theclub.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Okay, all right Okay.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
So if you want to join, you would join just like
everybody else.
You go toSouthlakepaddleclubcom, go to
members, click on the greenbutton, fill out the form that
comes to us and we process yourmembership.
And really what that means isthere's a welcoming email that
you get and you get set up onSignUp Genius and you get set up
on Discord, which is ourcommunication platform.
(33:37):
Okay, so we're going to do thatOctober 1st.
What we're going to do there iswe're not going to open it up
for people outside of Southlakeuntil our next enrollment window
, and at this point that'sprobably going to be November.
You know we're already intoOctober here and a few more, a
(33:59):
few, a couple more weeks, lessthan a couple of weeks, and
we'll probably do that end ofOctober, early November, which
should coincide with the openingof the new facility, the Taj
Mahal.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
The Taj Mahal pickleball.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
And we'll have the Nationals right after that,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Are you playing in Nationals Tim?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I'm not Okay, no.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
I didn't make the cut in the last tournament that I
played in.
That could have gotten mygolden ticket.
And then I've got a little bitof a knee issue that I'm playing
like once a week, twice a week,trying to get back into it.
But no, I'm not, I'm notplaying.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Well, you know, you can still go without having a.
Apparently they they opened itback up.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, is that still lottery based?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
I don't think so.
I just, for some reason, I'mthinking that they didn't get
the.
It's not full.
But I don't know I could be,let me double, let me fact check
myself.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Do a full fact check.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, no, I may be so , and you know what I might
still do that A part of me hasjust been a little bit on the
sideline here with my knees, soI haven't really thought a whole
lot about it, honestly.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Right, right, the pickleball injuries.
They do, they do challenges.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Tim.
I played this morning withAllison and Mary Reiniac, me and
Tess against them.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
They want me to check their games and I am sitting on
ice right now.
She was literally sitting onice.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I literally what happened out there?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
They destroyed me.
They destroyed me, they had me.
I have a new nickname.
It went from okay, I was thewall, then what was I?
The Tasmanian Devil, thenLittle Monster, and now Allison
gave me the nickname of DuckDuck.
You know what Duck Duck is?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Duck, duck.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
You know when you go to a shooting gallery and that
was ducks like or they're herethen they're there, then they're
there, then they're there andyou gotta take them down.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Are you the?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
one shooting or the one ducking.
I was the duck runningeverywhere and getting
everything she's like you areeverywhere, and you know,
because of course I can't let astinkin' ball go.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Drives me nuts to let a ball go, so I was all over
the place this morning.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
I am.
I am literally.
I told John, when this is over,I'm done, I'm going to go sit
in bed.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Well, when is it over for you?
You play, you're like, at sevenleagues.
You play at seven leagues.
Four leagues.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
This is their schedule.
So Friday morning driving toBrookhaven for a TCD league.
Friday night we're playingmixed TCD.
Saturday morning getting upplaying mixed league.
Sunday night playing thatmakeup from in McKinney that you
(36:43):
know that rain out.
So Sunday night You're leavingone out.
Oh, I am.
What is it?
Freaking Bruce Reath recruitedyou as a sub Bruce.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Reath.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
He advanced to us for our MLP practice match Saturday
oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Okay, so Saturday morning, so two times on Friday,
saturday morning, saturdayafternoon I'm practicing with
Bruce's team for against John,and then Sunday evening going to
McKinney for the makeup sessionand then Monday morning with a
couple of the girls that youknow we're doing some high level
like just training play.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I mean I'm sick.
Do you even?
I mean right about burnout,because that seems like you're
on the verge of burnout.
Let us be honest.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
No, I'm not, because it just I'm getting better and
better.
I mean I think even thismorning you know it was even
though it was tough.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
We.
I mean I had to really thinkquick and I mean I wasn't, it
wasn't like it was, I wasgetting destroyed.
So I mean that's a lot ofgrowth from from where I was.
Yeah, you know yeah, that'sgood.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Hey, quick change of subject.
But along those same lines,what do you guys think about the
SBC MLP matchups on Friday,saturday and Sunday, those spots
, is that you think people aregoing to fill those up?
I mean, you guys are goingoutside of those, it seems like
on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Well, we had to because of previous commitments,
but I think it's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, ok, good, so you think it's going to work.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, have they.
Have people signed up?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
We're going to play on Sunday, the news team and
then the race team that I'm onwe're playing on Sunday
afternoon, so I think we're theonly ones signed up so far.
But again, again, I hope that alot of the members are going to
listen to this.
If you're on a team an MLP teamI didn't do the math, but
there's a ton of spots, a ton ofopportunities you could play
(38:36):
before you actually play inOctober.
And just speaking from lastyear, that would have been an
awesome thing, like we practiceda couple of times, but once we
got to the games, john, you wereon my team, right?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
We didn't play games before that Did we no yeah.
No, no so think about whatcould have happened, John, if we
played some games.
I think about it every freakingnight, Tim.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
You know, you're on the right side with that left
lefty forehand and I'm on theleft side with the righty
forehand.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
I mean, that was quite a it would have been
special.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Well, what do we make ?
We have?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
12 teams.
I think we were fifth orsomething, were we?
Speaker 2 (39:10):
I was our fourth, I want to say, I'll say fourth
yeah that sounds good.
I'll say fourth so big timeshere in pickleball, not only
with the club but withOctoberfest, with the MLP
tournament, with the nationalpickleball center.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Well, you got to explain what Octoberfest is yeah
, let's break that down If wehad a couple of minutes here,
right, let's go ahead, go ahead.
So we're.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
This is for the people listening.
The the chamber has this annualOctoberfest.
It's number one in the state OfTexas by I don't know who rates
.
I think that's kind of funnythat there's a actual system Is
(39:51):
that most beer consumed as ahousework.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I don't know, like, what's the criteria for that?
Speaker 3 (39:56):
But number in the top five in the country, apparently
, and so they were looking fornew ways to entertain people.
And one, a friend of ours who,who runs the Wiener dog races
for Octoberfest, is how aboutpickleball?
And do I have the right forthat?
So next thing, you know, we'remeeting with the chamber and and
what turned into hey, can youdo something Saturday, sunday
(40:18):
afternoon, as I'm hearing himtalk and he's like you know, we
need something that's going toentertain people, keep people
there.
And I'm like well, nothing'smore entertaining than
pickleball, of course.
Why not run pickleball thewhole time?
Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,walk out 20, seven hours of
pickleball.
So we purchased a pickle roll.
We're going to have it in SouthLake Town Square.
(40:38):
This is the first of its kind Ithink that I've ever heard of.
Certainly I haven't heard ofanything like this in the area.
I mean, I think they've donetried to do like some kind of
you know clinics or justteaching kids, but but on like
chalking off the street, right.
So we're actually purchased apickle roll, we're bringing it
(40:59):
in.
That's that, if for anyonewho's listening to this.
You know we're going to betalking about it in.
That's that.
If for anyone listening topickle roll and you don't know
what that is, it's what the PPAuses when they do these events.
In fact they're they're crazybusy right now setting up for
the nationals that's coming hereat Brookhaven.
I didn't realize that they wereactually using those courts for
for these tournaments, but theydo, and so we'll have an actual
(41:23):
court and we're going to haveexhibition matches and just high
level matches.
And when I say exhibition, it'sgoing to be like South Lake and
South Lake City Council versusour neighboring Keller City
Council, or we're actually goingto have a special locked in yet
(41:43):
, but it's getting there.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I'm pretty sure we're working on it.
Well, but that's that's thetype of thing we're talking
about Right.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
That's the idea is to do something that's going to
maybe place fire right.
We're working on that to see ifwe can tee that up.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
So yeah, even most importantly, we're going to have
some South Lake paddle clubMembers that are going to be out
there playing.
I think that the announcementwent out today.
Today is Wednesday, the 20th,and there's four different ways
you can participate you can be aplayer, you can be a volunteer,
you can be a sponsor, you canhave your naming rights to one
of the matches, you can be avendor.
(42:17):
So we do have a 20 by 10 tentgoing to be court side.
We've already talked to severalpeople.
We've locked down some of thespaces already and there's over
100,000 people that'll walkthrough those little streets in
downtown South Lake over a threeday period.
So we will have moreinformation about that.
This is going to be first class.
This is not chalk on the street.
(42:38):
It's going to be a first classpickleball event.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
My hat is off to the two of you because the
dedication to this game ofpickleball I don't know if
there's a couple in our city Infact there's not, let's be
honest that is dedicated to thisgame and doing the things you
guys are doing, and it's easy topartner with you guys because
you're all in pickleball, right.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
So my hat's off to you guys.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
My hat's off.
You've got Dig Pro.
You know what Great merchandiseI know.
You've got the pickleballbusiness that's just about to
start, so corporations couldbasically have events that they
can participate and bring theiremployees out to play.
What a great concept that is.
So my hat's off to you guys.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.