036 Transcript 

 

 

Morgan Evans:
It’s the Morgan Evans More or Less Pickleball Podcast coming at you in 3, 2, 1. Boom.

Morgan Evans:
My guest today is the managing director of competition for USA pickleball, which means she’s a big deal, and if you meet her at a tournament, you should probably be nice. We’re going to talk about the nationals, December 6th to 14th at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, primarily what it’s going to take for people to get in. So if you’re one of the legions of players that might be a little confused leading up to registration, then please welcome Karen Parrish.

Morgan Evans:
Karen Parrish, how are you?

Karen Parrish :
I’m great darling. How are you?

Morgan Evans:
Very well. Very well. You staying busy?

Karen Parrish :
Oh yes.

Morgan Evans:
I imagine the kind of workload you’ve got is second to none.

Karen Parrish :
It is right now.

Morgan Evans:
All right, let’s get into it. Are you excited as I am?

Karen Parrish :
Absolutely.

Morgan Evans:
Okay now, before we dive too deep into the tournament details, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into the game and what sort of inspired you to become the managing director of competition for our governing body?

Karen Parrish :
Sure. So I was working at a local gym, I guess you could say, and I was working at the front desk, and this is our city gym, and I heard this noise in the back and I was like, “What is this?’ So I go to the back, and this was back in 2012, 2013, and there was a nice man who had come down, one of our snowbirds from Canada, and happened to bring his equipment with him. And I fell in love with the game after the first hit. I was hooked and I was like, “How do I get involved?” So I looked into USA pickleball. At the time, it was USA PA, and became an ambassador, and I was a local ambassador. And when I signed up to be the local ambassador, they said, “How about being the regional director? We don’t have a regional director of the Atlantic south region.”

Karen Parrish :
I said, “Okay, what all does that entail?” And they explained that to me, and I said, “Sure, I’d be happy to do it.” All of this is volunteer time, which was no problem. So I signed up as being a regional director, did that for four, four and a half years, but as a volunteer, it was starting to become a lot, and it was just a lot, especially considering I worked a full-time job. So I needed to back off a little bit. And I became the district ambassador, which would have just been from my area, the Northwest Florida area, and then the position of managing director competition came about. And, at first I looked at it, I was like, “I’m not sure,” because the office is out here in Arizona and I’m from Destin, Florida, which is one of the most beautiful in the world. And so I looked into it and through a very dear friend of mine who continued to contact me like, “Please apply for this position.” I did, and after a six month process, I became managing director of competition in 2019. It’s been a little over two years and I have loved every minute of it.

Morgan Evans:
Wow. Who was the friend? Just out of interest, so we know who to thank.

Karen Parrish :
Laura Patterson.

Morgan Evans:
Laura Patterson. Okay. If I meet her, I will shake her hand.

Morgan Evans:
Okay, fantastic. I am glad you fell in love with the sport instantly, like we most do, and have risen to fame and fortune, hopefully. The nationals obviously is the kind of crowning achievement of competition for USA pickleball. It’s a huge endeavor. Just curious how many kinds of staff and volunteers are going to be needed to run this year’s event?

Karen Parrish :
Okay. So, on site, oh my goodness, you have your pickup tournament’s .com team that we could not do this without. Melissa McCurley and her team do such an incredible job. We’ll be working with them, and Desert Champions, who’s there at Indian Wells Tennis Garden, so you can imagine all of their staff and everybody that’s on board. Myself and my two co-tournament directors, Don Pavan and Terry Carter, and then the entire USA pickleball staff. You’re looking at 50 plus people, I would think, that’s going to come in and have all hands on deck to run this tournament.

Morgan Evans:
Wow. That’s more people than some of the round Robins around here. So impressive. Registration opens August 1st for the majority of people. Compared to other tournament, I’m sure there’s a lot of headaches involved, what makes this different compared to the majority?

Karen Parrish :
Well, it is the national tournament, and with the national tournament, it’s not something you can just register for because we don’t have a hundred courts with lights, so to speak. I wish that we did, but we don’t. So we have to limit it based on capacity and availability. And so through that, we offer the golden ticket. And what that means is if you get your golden ticket at a qualifying event, you get pre-registration, which gives you your automatic entry into nationals, right? And then if there’s any available slots afterwards, we have a lottery process. And what that means is if you have played in a qualifying event, your name is automatically in the lottery, and we do a random draw. And during the random draw, which will take place in August, we will contact you to let you know that your name has been selected and you can log in and register for the events that you’ve been selected for.

Morgan Evans:
Ooh, we should make it televised and we’ll draw names out of a hat. That’d be great

Karen Parrish :
Wouldn’t that be fun.

Morgan Evans:
That’d be great fun. We’ll do it on center court at Indian Wells. I’m clearly nominating myself to provide that. So firstly, thank you for explaining those details. The average player who is relying on the lottery, obviously the golden tickets had to carry over from 2019. What does that meant for the average players and their chances to rely on the lottery?

Karen Parrish :
So for this year, it’s going to be difficult because we had 2300 plus players with golden tickets. And as you know, not everybody is going to play with that same person that they got their golden ticket with. So, capacity could be an issue. It may not. But again, we will see if there’s any lottery availability for those players that aren’t playing with the same partner. They may select someone that didn’t get a golden ticket, but is available through what we call the lottery or by playing in a qualifying event. So we’re expecting capacity to max out at 2,500 people. That’s where we would like to be, then we’ll see. We’re in the middle of registration process now. I haven’t taken a look at the numbers lately, but we’re hoping to get to that 2,500 number.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. So in a perfect world, a golden ticket holder would partner up with another golden ticket holder.

Karen Parrish :
I mean, that would be great, but they can also split apart, which to me personally, if I won a golden ticket with somebody, I’m not sure why I would want to go with somebody else, but it does happen for… Unfortunately either they can’t play due to injury or vacation or illness or whatever, so they have to find someone else.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. But based on limited kind of number availability, there’s no real guarantee that that can work or is it sort of, if one of you has a golden ticket, they can choose wherever the one and it’s a guarantee?

Karen Parrish :
That’s right. So if you had a… If I had a golden ticket and you didn’t, but you played in a qualifying event, I can list you as my partner, and then I go ahead and register to hold that spot, and on August 1st, you log in and register and pay your event fee.

Morgan Evans:
Beautiful. Okay. Well, that’s good news for a lot of people. Pro players versus amateur players, is there a different kind of entry system or rules involved?

Karen Parrish :
Well, there is this year. We’re implementing something… To manage a pro event, it takes a lot of work, right? So in order to make it manageable, we had to limit how we’re going to handle that, to ensure that all the pro players are able to get into nationals. What we’ve heard in the past is a 64 team draw and a men’s doubles or mixed doubles, that’s just way too many. I mean, honestly it is. So we’ve looked at this year doing a 32 team draw in men’s doubles and mixed, and a 24 team draw in women’s doubles and in men’s and women’s singles. You know you’re going to have the best of the best to do that. We are going to have a national tournament committee going to come up with a selection process. And it just so happens Morgan, that we may need one more person on that, and I would love to select you to be a part of that team. I could use insight your insight.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, well you’re putting me on the spot here. Jeez. Look, as soon as the check clears, I’m all yours, don’t you worry. No, and it’s certainly something we can talk about, and I’m honored you asked. And that was kind of alluding to my next question. If there is a selection committee that decides what is a pro… There’s a lot of players that play in pro divisions. However, whether their rating actually warrants it or if they should be is a different animal. Are you going to do it ratings based or is it actually going to be [crosstalk 00:09:37].

Karen Parrish :
We’re going to look at ratings, one. We’re going to look at tournament history more so than anything else to take a look at who you’ve been playing against, how well you’ve done against these players. You might be a pro player and say, “I want to play in this event,” and then you end up playing Ben Johnson going 11-0 11-0. Well, you’re probably not going to play in the pro event in nationals. So, definitely a strong selection is going to take place. On many different levels, looking at where they’re ranked through different rankings engines, we see out there what your UTPR is out there and the selection committee as well. And for anybody that does not make it into the 32 team draw, you’ll be placed in the 5-0 bracket. So you’ll still get your… If you won a golden ticket, because you played at an event, if you don’t make it into the pro bracket, you still get into nationals through your golden ticket, but it would just be in a 5-0 event.

Morgan Evans:
I see. Okay. Well, that’s cool. Do you think there’s ever going to be a good reason for a qualifying round robin or something like that prior to the main event?

Karen Parrish :
Oh, absolutely. And we were looking at doing that this year. We were going to do a top 24 instead of 32 with a round robin or even a double elimination pro qualifier at the beginning of the week, and then taking the top eighteens and bringing them into the bracket. So we definitely foresee something like that happening in the future one, that’s going to be a lot more manageable, and two, you know you’re going to get the best of the best in these brackets. It’s not just a sign up and register to be in the bracket.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. That sounds like a great, happy medium that allows your average lookyloo that’s trying to be a pro, trying to make it, at least a chance. So I do hope that that’s something that can get put in in the future. So step in the right direction there. Well done. Well done.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, okay. Now, quick question. If you won a golden ticket say in 2019, and you were say a 3-5, but now you put in the training. A lot of people really drilled hard during COVID, and say now you’re a 4-5, do you have to play in the ticket division or what you are now?

Karen Parrish :
You register at your current UTPR, and we’ve noticed that, you get your golden ticket by winning the event, but you register at your UTPR. So they would play at whatever their current UTPR is.

Morgan Evans:
Okay, great. Good to hear. Good to hear.

Morgan Evans:
We’re going to take a quick break there with Karen for a word from our sponsor, CouchME Pickleball.

Morgan Evans:
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Morgan Evans:
Honestly, you’d be losing money if you didn’t sign up. So, go right ahead. Okay. Back over to Karen.

Morgan Evans:
So you’ve been doing this for a while. Do you actually play tournaments? I haven’t seen you wield a paddle. I know you’re always very, very busy.

Karen Parrish :
I actually do play every once in a while. I was lucky enough to participate in the Pacific Northwest regional in Boise, Idaho, that was run by our regional director Mike Hoxie and his team and had a blast. And I had a great time winning a gold medal in Women’s 4-0 50 plus with certified referee Randi Levenbaum.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, Mike. I know Mike. He’s a good guy.

Karen Parrish :
He’s great.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah, he came down and ran a tournament for us at Palm Desert.

Karen Parrish :
Oh yeah, Mike and I, we’ve been through the regional director and the tournament scene for many years and he does a great job.

Morgan Evans:
For sure. And hopefully we’ll see him at the nationals.

Karen Parrish :
Oh yeah. He’s also part of my national tournament team from the regional director side, so I have no doubt he’ll be there.

Morgan Evans:
Great. Excellent. And one thing I noticed when I was… I was lucky enough to have a golden ticket, and at the time of airing, it was a week ago that I was able to sign up for preregistration. And I noticed there doesn’t look to be age within skill events available to pro players. Is that something just to help make room for more players? I was able to register for men’s doubles pro but not any age events.

Karen Parrish :
Oh yes. So what that means is you’re either a pro or you’re not, right? So the ones that are 5-O players or whatever… We want to make sure that they have an opportunity to participate in a skill age bracket, as opposed to say a 5-5 or 6-0 or whatever player, playing down. A pro is a pro, right? You’re at that level due to your tournament history wins, due to your skill level set. So if you’re a pro, we want to see you playing in that pro event. Again, the only thing is, is we’re limiting the draw. So by limiting the draw, if you do not make it into the draw, you will be placed in the 5-0 bracket.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. Gotcha. So now, in previous events, often pros turn up and play the age events at the beginning of the week and it gives them a kind of a warmup for the current-

Karen Parrish :
Oh my goodness. Those days, I used to love those days. It was so much fun to watch, but knowing how many tournaments go on now and how many people we have pre-registering, we just don’t have the time or the availability to allow that. I will say this one of the things that we’re looking at doing in the future, which they did at the US open, which I had a blast attending and watching, was the skill age brackets where you had an older player playing with a younger player in the pro divisions. That was great. We wanted to accommodate that for this year’s nationals, but unfortunately again, or not unfortunately I should say, due to the numerous golden tickets, we weren’t able to offer that this year, but look for that to be added in the future. That was such a great event.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. So once the kind of … the current bottleneck it’s being caused by excess amount of golden tickets is kind of alleviated this year, next year’s nationals there could be some interesting changes in formats.

Karen Parrish :
Oh, absolutely. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Not that this year won’t, but we just felt it fair for the 2019 participants to keep their golden tickets. That was the only way to do it.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. And I thank you for that, because I was one of those. Much appreciated. I’m always scared that I’m going to get knocked off some kind of list that helps me get into these things. So thank you.

Morgan Evans:
All right, now, so to help with selection and feeling the nationals, the USA pickleball has come up with the national championship series of tournaments. I recently played in, I think the first of that, which was the Newport Beach championship, where I met you there. That was nice. What else is there in line for the rest of the year for that series?

Karen Parrish :
The regional tournaments are going to be filtering into what’s called an amateur championship series in 2022, right? So the golden tickets have been switched over to the national championship series, but with that being said, there are two regional tournaments that did not get that opportunity to filter into this year’s nationals due to when they are taking place, the West regional and the mid-Atlantic regional. So golden ticket winners from those two regionals will still filter into 2022. Then you have the Newport Beach tournament, which you just participated in. Thanks for coming. Oh my gosh, the weather was fabulous. We had so much fun with that. Then you have TOC coming up, and then you have the APP Atlanta open and APP Hilton head open are the remaining tournaments for this year. We’re still looking at bringing on tournaments in 2022 that would qualify to get into nationals. Which ones they are, we haven’t selected yet. Probably will be the indoor national again, like we had in Birmingham, Hoover this past year. That will probably be another one, but we’re looking at having instead of… Oh my goodness, I think this year, containing the 2019, 24 plus tournaments, we’re looking at doing 12.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. Right. Excellent. So that sort of puts a premium on your performance in those 12 and limits the amount of tickets that could be available. So, I mean obviously with the game, where it was five years ago and to where it is now, there’s obviously been some growing pains trying to legitimize the tournament as the nationals and not something whereby … if you a handy with a computer and you manage to get in and pay before anyone else, you get to come in. Has it been difficult now that you’re in charge and probably receiving a lot of emails from players that remember the Casa Grande days?

Karen Parrish :
I don’t know that difficult is the word. I think challenging might be a little bit better because you just put your head down and you go to work, but I will say this. Having a great partner, and pickleball tournament.com makes a huge difference because we couldn’t do what we do without them. And what I like to tell people is USA pickleball and pickleball tournaments.com working together to provide you a championship experience. And to me, that’s a golden ticket right there. The days of logging in and trying to get in quicker and, who’s got the quickest software system or internet system or whatever, those days are over. And I so very lucky and blessed to work with Melissa and her team in different scenarios on how we can provide a better experience overall for the players that are able to register for these events.

Morgan Evans:
Nice. Yeah. I have Melissa on the show three or four weeks ago and she has an absolute workhorse. It’s amazing what that woman gets done before breakfast. It’s more than I do in a month, I think.

Karen Parrish :
That’s very true.

Morgan Evans:
So obviously the writing is kind of on the wall here with where nationals was going. It would seem though… It would seem in the next five or 10 years, there isn’t going to be a lottery per se, or at least it will just become a kind of a wild card and you will have enough regional tournaments and high-level tournaments to be able to say, “Okay, if you got bronze, silver or gold in one of these, congratulations, you’re in,” or maybe just silver or gold. Is that something that you guys are preparing for or do you think they’ll always be a lottery for all the lookyloos out there?

Karen Parrish :
Well, I think we’re pretty much there now, because we, again, we had over 2300 tickets for nationals, but again, that’s from two years in the registration. Could there be lottery in the future? I could very well see that there is going to continue to be some type of lottery or wildcard in the future, but I can also see that that would be from medalist only in the future, as opposed to just anybody that qualified by playing in that tournament. It is nationals. We do want the best of the best at these events, so our wildcard or lottery participants could be medalist only.

Morgan Evans:
Okay, good. Yeah. I mean it has to get there eventually, right? It’s something where we have a gold standard tournament, like the nationals. It certainly needs to be the very best of the best, and I think everyone kind of understands that.

Karen Parrish :
Oh absolutely.

Morgan Evans:
Now obviously the USA… I was about to say USA PA. I’ve been training myself so hard to say USA Pickleball. They partnered up with Indian Wells Tennis Garden, one of their premier venues in the sporting world. I know you may have come on after that decision was made, but do you know how that kind of came about?

Karen Parrish :
So, yes as a matter of fact. So, as you had brought up earlier, the Casa Grande, or our contract there was up and we were looking for a venue, and then we happened to hear through the grapevine that there was this really nice tennis facility in Indian Wells that started a pickleball program, which I’m sure you are very well up because you were a part of the group there that started the pickleball program. And thanks to yourself, Kim Jade, many other players there in that area that continued the growth of pickleball there, we were able to start conversations as well as meetings, numerous meetings and conversations, and realize that this was more than just changing the venue to a one-year contract, but making this more of a multi-year contract, because there is no doubt, it is the premier event venue in the world, and working with Desert Champions at Indian Wells tennis garden is like no other. We are so lucky to have them as a partner and work with them on many aspects, and we look forward to continue working with them for many years in the future.

Morgan Evans:
Beautiful. And obviously there is a kind of an elephant in the room and I just want to address it and get it out of the way. There obviously has been a bit of an uproar from a lot of people regarding the necessary vaccinations to play in this year’s nationals. And I think it’s important for people to know that wasn’t a USA pickleball decision, that was on the hands of the venue. I’m sure they have very good reasons, and with any luck we’ll still have a fantastic tournament.

Karen Parrish :
Yeah. I mean, there’s no doubt. I mean, we have a statement up on our website as well as they do. But again I just want to reiterate that we are partners with Indian Wells and with Desert Champions and you just don’t leave a partnership or a relationship based on something like this. We work very well together. We work very hard with them ensuring that the players and spectators alike are provided a championship experience. Again, we look forward to many years in the future of continued progress with them.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. I mean, I think with a lot of talk going on about this Delta variant, it’s hard to argue. It’s still kind of needs to be a safety first scenario. So hopefully all the players out there that are thinking about that can put it to one side and still have a wonderful event.

Karen Parrish :
I mean, absolutely. We’re registering like nobody’s business every day. So, we look forward to a great of that. Can’t wait to see you there.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah, no I’m coming. Now, one last question. Trust me, and then you’re off to save the world in another tournament. I was at the Newport tournament a few weeks ago and the Franklin ball was used. Is it fair to assume that the nationals will also be using the Franklin?

Karen Parrish :
Well, it’s funny that you say that because we’re making an announcement regarding which ball we’re going to use for nationals tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, okay. Well, so tomorrow, that’ll be exactly a week prior to this airing. So you wouldn’t technically be spilling the beans, if you wanted to say it.

Karen Parrish :
I would not technically be spilling the beans. You’re absolutely correct, but I can’t spill the beans.

Morgan Evans:
Fair enough. Well, Switzerland usually does well in these situations. So, we’ll give that one to…

Morgan Evans:
Karen Parrish, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming on and helping clear up some of the possible myths versus facts of what’s required to get into our premier tournament.

Karen Parrish :
Thank you, Morgan. I look forward to seeing you soon.

Morgan Evans:
Beautiful. All right. Take care, sweetie.

Karen Parrish :
Bye bye.

Morgan Evans:
This podcast was powered by Selkirk.

Morgan Evans:
This podcast is also brought to you by the next generation of Selkirk paddle, the Vanguard.

Morgan Evans:
Well, that’s all we’ve got time for in today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, I’m Morgan Evans, and this has been More or Less Pickleball.