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In today's episode, we invited a representative from USTA Atlanta to talk about their pickleball
opportunities for players in Metro Atlanta.
Called Atlanta Team Pickleball, the league has an upcoming team registration deadline of
March 27th.
So go to USTAAtlanta.com/pickleball and get registered today.
Stay tuned for more information from Andrea Staniskew of USTA Atlanta.
Who are you and why do we care?
Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
First of all, my name is Andreea.
I am a community programs coordinator for USTA Atlanta and I oversee our pickleball opportunities.
I am the league coordinator of Atlanta Team Pickleball and we are here to bring pickleball
opportunities to Atlanta.
Thank you for having me.
And this is called Atlanta Team Pickleball.
So I will point out, we don't call it USTA anything.
This is called Atlanta Team Pickleball Intentionally.
We call it Atlanta Team Pickleball and it is presented by USTA Atlanta.
Okay, we got to get the sponsorship right.
Get all the branding proper.
That's good.
So tell us about Atlanta Team Pickleball.
Right, yes.
So we are fairly new to the game.
We started about two years ago.
This Atlanta Team Pickleball is a league.
We have a combo double format right now in the spring and in the fall we usually organize
single gender formats.
So that means men's and women's division separately.
So it is, you know, six to eight week long league.
We play locally regular season playoffs and then city finals were the top teams battle
to win their division.
We use a DUPR.
That's our official rating system.
So we are looking at dDUPR parameters and that's how each player registers in the right rating
divisions.
And yeah, one of the most exciting things is that we get to set the top teams in each division
to one culminating event, which is called the triple team national championship that it's
happening at the end of each year.
So that's the fun part, right?
So we assume if we do well, we're going to go to nationals and we're going to win and
we're going to be champions of the world.
How does this back to the combo?
You say combo is in the spring.
Gendered male female separate teams are in the fall.
Combo is that adult for co-ed?
Right.
So it's basically the triple team, the national championship organization word for the
co-ed.
So you will have, you will play the genders around.
So men, play men, women, play women and then you have two rounds of mixed.
The other fun part about this, it kind of runs a little bit differently than other leagues
because in the mixed format, you get to set basically your two lines of mixed and then
that was the first round plays home team one plays versus the 13 one home teams two plays
versus the 13 two and then four round two.
You get to swap.
So the same players will have to stay and they just swap to play the other team that they
haven't played in the first round of mixed doubles.
Okay.
So that's how we answered the whole format question, which is how do we take something and
don't make it as long as tennis, but also don't keep it as short as a single pickleball game.
That makes a lot of sense.
And so in this case, combo is the USTA version.
We're talking about co-ed, but combo also means are you combining my ratings?
I'm rated a 5.0 and my wife's rated a 4.0 and we play together and together we're
a 9.0.
How does that work in pickleball?
Yeah, no, that we do that a little bit different.
We don't do that like tennis leagues.
We strictly look at doopers or do per is all official rating.
So let's say we have right now our registration is open for our combo the double season.
One of the divisions that we have is 18 of 15 plus combo 3.0 to 3.49.
The 3.0 to 3.49 those are the parameters we are looking at.
So all the players that are in that parameter, let's say you want to create a team and all
your teammates all have between 3.0 and 3.49.
Well, they're qualified to play in that rating and they all play at that rating.
Okay, so more like everybody is a 5.0 in that range or less.
Right.
Gotcha.
Okay.
So we have different DUPR parameters.
The combo is the problem because the combo league is a my rating plus your rating total
system from a tennis perspective.
That's for tennis.
Yeah.
No, no, that's completely different.
We in pickable, we don't look at it that way.
We kind of do it.
Well, in this aspect, we do it a little bit different.
Yeah, no, that's good.
Just making sure I know what I'm looking at when I see that website and it says combo, I'm
not adding money rating to somebody else's rating like I would in tennis because we come
in from tennis and we think we know what we're doing.
But yeah, yeah, in this aspect, pickable is way different.
You know, the way our league runs is kind of similar to a USTA Atlanta tennis adult leagues
because we play locally, we have a regular season, we have a playoff and then we have city
finals and then we get to send these top teams that win city finals to this culminating event
that it's very exciting and all the teams we've sent so far have great, great experience
and great feedback.
That's fantastic.
Okay.
What I need to know is somebody in our audience is interested in getting signed up right now,
like if you're listening to this in six months, don't worry, just learn what you can, you're
not getting registered today.
But if we were to say register today, where do they go and what's the deadline?
Yeah.
So they go to our website, ustaAtlanta.com/pickleball.
They will see that our combo double season is right now on.
They have the link to register and they can always email me at pickleball@ustaAtlanta.com.
I am happy to answer all of the questions, but our website is designed with as much information
in a sustained way as possible so that all the questions can be answered there and if you
have additional questions, then you can always email us.
And I'm happy to respond about it.
Pickable@ustaAtlanta.com.
That's what we got.
Okay.
We'll make sure all that information's in the show now.
It's in all the links are there.
Anybody interested in jumping in now?
Can I register as an individual last question?
Individual?
Do I need a team?
How does that work?
So right now we don't have a free agent list, quote unquote, because the format of the
league is home and away.
So we have kind of different counties in our jurisdiction.
So we allow teams to register in those counties that we oversee and they can play together
as a team.
It's a little bit more difficult when we have this type of format to create free agents because
just because we don't know where they all are.
But if you are interested to play, again, you can always email me and I'm going to look
into platform and see if any player, if only team needs a player, then I'm more than happy
to make that introduction and see what comes out of there.
Perfect.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much.
We're going to learn more and more.
We're going to do this more often.
Andreea, I really appreciate your time and we'll talk to you again soon.
Thanks so much.
Thank you so much for having us.
Thank you.
Well, there you have it.
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