GRPA Tournament

The Georgia Recreation and Parks Association (GRPA) organizes regional and state tournaments for a number of sports, including the best one...pickleball, of course.

Structure

Players represent their home agency by competing in local, district, and state tournaments.

In order to compete at District, players need to be selected by their local agency. Depending on the rules at the time, each local agency may only send 1-2 teams per age/skill division, so if there are 3+ teams who are interested in playing that age/skill bracket, the home agency would need to have playoffs of some sort.

Players who are selected to represent their home agency advance to the District tournament, where the top 2 teams in each age/skill group will advance to State. If you play in the district tournament, you must commit to going to the state tournament. The system doesn't work if people win the district then don't bother to show-up to state.

Registration

Players register through their home agency, typically their home county parks department. For those of us in Gwinnett County, we register through the Gwinnett County Parks & Rec department. But if your local agency isn't participating in the GRPA pickleball program, you can join another agency, so long as:

• your home agency endorses your participation

• you stay within your district

• you don't pass over another agency to play with another (geographically speaking)

• you actually play pickleball in the area of your proposed host agency

So if Gwinnett wasn't participating, I could play with Alpharetta, since I regularly play at North Park, or Hall County, since I play at Alberta Banks, etc.

Players are divided into age/skill divisions.

• Ages: 14-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70+

• Skills: 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0+

Register by calling Pat @ Gwinnett County (770-417-2210) or emailing me (Brian Garrett gwinnettpickleball@gmail.com)

2022 Details

Date & Location (2022)

The Gwinnett County Playoffs (if needed) will be held August 13th at Rhodes Jordan Park (Lawrenceville). Playoffs are only necessary if more than two teams/players want to represent Gwinnett in the same age/skill bracket.

The District 7 Tournament will be held August 27-28 at North Pahrk (Alpharetta).

The State Tournament will be held September 17-18 at Tattnall Square Park (Macon)

Format

All brackets play in a round robin. USA Pickleball rules apply, except that all games are "win by 1", not 2.

The 2021 format was:

• 2 teams - 3 games to 15

• 3 teams - play each opponent 3x to 11

• 4 teams - play each opponent 2x to 11

• 5-8 teams - play each opponent once to 11

• If there are 9+ teams, the bracket will be broken into two pools.

In 2020 the two pools did not have playoffs, so you had two gold medal winners for that age/skill group. I discussed this with them and hopefully this year they will have the top two teams from the two pools do playoffs. #fingerscrossed

Cost

Each host agency controls costs for their playoffs, if required. In '21 the District tournament was $30/team (doubles) and $10/player (singles); we don't know costs for '22 yet. I'm not sure what State costs, either.