Over 300 pickleball players from five Canadian provinces and territories are converging in Regina for the inaugural Western Canadian regional pickleball championship.
“It’s a good feeling to be back after a long time, it is to be back and see lots of people playing and watching pickleball,” Allan Carpentier, Pickleball Regina board member and co-chair said.
The championship tournament is is inside the Viterra International Trade Centre, bringing together pickleball aficionados from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories.
The sport is becoming more popular in the queen city. Pickleball Regina memberships skyrocketed from under thirty-five in twenty-seventeen, to more than nine-hundred members as of June 2022.
The tournament is running through the weekend and wraps up Sunday night.
“Well, the reason we’re here is because we’re holding the inaugural Western Canadian Regional Championship that has been delayed for the last couple of years in. We were supposed to host this in 2020. So here we are today. So that’s great, says Carpentier.
There are 291 participants registered and 45 referees. They have over 150 volunteers.
“The participants are excited to be here. The volunteers are just ecstatic, were loving it,” he said.
He added that the event was attended by Laura Ross from the ministry of parks, culture and sports, Ward 4 Councillor Lori Bresciani and the president of Pickleball Canada.
“This sport is a social game, anybody can play it but the biggest group of people that play this game are probably over 40. We’re really trying to promote younger people to come and play,” Carpentier said.
He added that the challenge they face is not having the proper facilities to accommodate games all year round. “We’ve got 21 courts here this weekend that we can play on. So that’s that’s fantastic.”
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