Hey gang, this will be another quick blog. I hope everyone has been having a great holiday season so far. It has been fun to meet and play with visiting family members that are visiting you. OK kick the tires and light the fires and blast off to the Pickleverse.

1. The Centre:  The courts have been bustling. After drop-in today all 7 courts were in play during the reserved court session and I did not recognize a single person. I am not sure what to expect for the coming week as some out of towners may be headed back home. Here is the schedule for the coming week at The Centre. Monday (the 30th), Tuesday (the 31st), and Wednesday (the 1st) wil be drop-in from 9:00 AM to 11:00 and reserved courts from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.  A couple of important notes for these days. First, we will only have the 3 courts on the main gym side available for play. There is a dog show event on the turf side of the building for those 3 days and they rented out the pickleball area so there are no overflow opportunities. Secondly, The Centre is still offering the Family Fun event from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM so while drop-in will get an hour head start, I have no idea if anyone will be showing up to play pickleball for the hour before the reserved court session. Chaos may reign or it may be very copasetic. Then on Thursday (the 2nd) and Friday (the 3rd) things begin to settle back to normal mostly. We will have the 4 courts on the turf side as the base. The Centre will offer Family Fun Days for those 2 days but that will run like it did this week. If the courts on the gym side are unused or underused we can ask for the OK to run any overflow there. Just a suggestion but this may be a good week to gather a small group of 4 - 6 and reserve a court during the 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM time slot or give C3 Sports a try.

2. C3 Sports:  C3 opens back up on Tuesday (the 31st) with their full availability schedule. They will be closed on Wednesday (the 1st). Effective Thursday (the 2nd) the will return to their normal weekday schedule for drop-in and reserved court sessions. See the link below if you are unfamiliar with those.

3. The Centre:  Effective 2025 The Centre will no longer be using paper punch cards. They will be instituting an electronic tracking program to manage prepaid games. You no longer will have to dig through a wallet or purse to look for a paper card. Walk in the door, go to the desk, warmly greet the desk attendant and provide them with your name and they will "punch" you in on the computer. Wait, it even gets better. The more you play, the more you save. Here is the cost breakdown. If you only purchase one session at a time the per session price is $8.00. If you purchase 10 sessions the cost per session is $7.50 ($75.00 for the block of ten), and if you purchase a block of 24 sessions the per session cost is $7.00 ($168 for the block). While this may not seem like a big discount, please keep in mind that The Centre has not raised their prices in the past two years so not only holding but also creating discount options is commendable IMHO. Now to make this happen The Centre needs all players to establish accounts and create a profile. The account not only allows them to manage this tracking program but also assures that players have signed off on the liability document, and they have provided emergency contact information. If you object to completing this I guess you could always go play at . . . oh wait, there is no indoor facility locally which is open to the public that does not require at least a liability waiver. TO SET UP YOUR ACCOUNT (if you don't have one) go to this website:  https://apps.daysmartrecreation.com/dash/x/#/online/nittany/login where it takes about 2 minutes to complete, is free and you won't have to do it at the desk. If you already have an account you are good to go and you can start purchasing sessions. FYI - the paper punch cards you are currently holding will be honored until they are used up.

4. Tournament Alert:  The State College High School Future Business Leaders of America will be hosting a pickleball tournament at The Centre on February 1, 2025. The tournament will run from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. This an "open style" format where the only brackets are Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Within those groups there are no sub-brackets for age or gender. A nice twist to the awards is that should one group, say 3 male/male teams sweep gold, silver, and bronze in a bracket, a prize would be awarded to the top finishing female/female and mixed gender team. Here is a link to see more about the tournament and how to register:  https://sites.google.com/scasd.org/fbla-pickleball-tournament/tournament-details.

5. Dinking In The New Year:  There is still time to register (closes on December 30} for DITNY. We have a number of teams from the local area headed down to Altoona to try to mine for some precious metal. For more information follow this link:  https://app.pickleballden.com/external-tournament/3241865.

6. 2025 Rule Changes:  For a review of rule changes for 2025 follow this link:  https://usapickleball.org/docs/2025-USA-Pickleball-Rulebook-Change-Document.pdf.
   
   

Have a great weekend and if I don't see you before, I hope to see you on the courts in 2025.

The Centre:  https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B4BA5AA28AB9-54152198-nvsc

C3 Sports:  https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B4BA5AA28AB9-54152204-c3pickleball

Randy Hoffman

Holbrook PIckleball Ambassador

https://holbrookpickleball.com/

Discount Code = RANDYHOFFMAN20