Paddleball Editorial – To Travel or Not?

A large number of paddleball players do not like to travel to other parks throughout the Tri-State area. For many there are legit reasons why they cannot travel, physical limitation, financially, family, too far, just to mention a few. Personally, I live in New Jersey and any travel to anywhere in NY is at least 100 miles round trip. So, I carefully plan my trips to NY and make sure paddleball games are included in my trips. I cannot travel to NY more than twice a week. If I could I would LOVE to visit different parks at least 3 times a week.

I’ve noticed a number of teams have dropped off the upcoming tournament scheduled for July 22 at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Originally this tournament was to take place across the Tri-State Area at different locations and the number of teams registered in advanced was significant in a short period of time. Now that the tournament format has changed due to the lack of participants in some of the boroughs, a number of teams have dropped off. As I said above, in some cases there are solid reasons why people cannot travel and that is fully understood. But in many cases is just that people do not want to travel because they feel more comfortable playing in their local parks.

In my opinion, it is critical  we(paddleball players) travel across the Tri-State Area to showcase our talents and support our tournaments. The handball community does a heck of a job in this area and I believe this is one of the reasons they are growing so fast. We, Paddleball players, need to do more of this. There are more pros than cons in doing this. Four important PROs, just to mention a few, when we travel to support the sport are:

1. Expose the game to the young generation.
2. Help grow the sport by showcasing our talents.
3. Large gathering sends a family message to the community where people bring their kids to watch and have a good time, i.e., PFA PowPows.
4. Large players turnout at tournaments, NO BETTER FORMULA TO ATTRACT POTENTIAL SPONSORS.

Your thoughts?  – Please lets use our energy on the POSITIVES thoughts instead of the negatives.