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January 27, 2021

This pandemic just won’t go away! The number of infections and deaths continue to rise. Our members and guests have adhered to our Covid-19 guidelines reasonably well with the exception of social distancing. Please renew your effort to stay six feet away from others, whether or not they have a mask on.

Here is the latest advice from the CDC regarding masks.

The CDC does not recommend the following:

We ask you not to wear these unrecommended coverings. If you wish to wear a shield, wear a mask underneath please. Please wear your mask to cover both your mouth and nose. Wearing the mask below the nose puts you and others at risk.

Remember to wear a mask at all times at Pictona except when 2 or 4 of you are playing on the court. Take the mask off when you step onto the court and re-mask when you step off the court. This seems to be hard for some of us to remember, but please renew your effort to do so. Also, if more than 4 people are on a court for instruction, please keep your masks on.

Masks in the Kitchen. First thank you for your increased patronage of the Kitchen. Our Pick 2 (soup, salad, and sandwich) has been very popular. Please wear a mask in the Kitchen except when eating and drinking of course. Don’t approach the counter without a mask. Remember to put your mask on when picking up your food, going to the restroom, or walking to another table to visit with someone. No more than 4 people at one table and 6 when 2 tables are moved together.

PLEASE DON’T BE OFFENDED BY OUR EFFORTS TO KEEP EVERYONE SAFE AT PICTONA SO WE CAN CONTINUE TO ENJOY PLAYING. OUR STAFF WILL REMIND YOU TO MASK UP AND STEP BACK.

 

I saw two partially filled pitchers of beer, a half dozen cups, and the remains of food left sitting on the bleachers between courts 5 and 6. I’m told this happens not infrequently in the evenings.

Food and drinks, other than water and sport drinks (beer is not a sport drink I’m sorry to say), are not to be consumed on anything painted blue or green.

Of course, we are happy to have you purchase food and drink from the Kitchen and to consume it anywhere other than where it is painted blue and green. We have seating in the Kitchen for you, outside the Kitchen on the concrete area, in the Loft, on the bleachers on the outside courts, and on the picnic tables under the Pavilion.

Also, would you please pick up after yourself. Throw away your rubbish in the bins provided. Our maintenance crew is having to spend more time picking up after our members. There is a cost to that task. 

We appreciate your cooperation with NO FOOD OR DRINKS ON BLUE AND GREEN and RUBBISH IN THE BINS. I’ve asked our managers on duty to remind you should you forget.

Rainer

Saturday 1/30/2021 1:00pm-3:00pm

Come join us for a Youth Pickleball Clinic. Juniors ages 8-17 are invited to come out and play with other juniors.

Equipment will be provided if necessary. The event is free and does require registration.

Call 386-310-7067 or email info@pictona.org to register.

Humana Community Gardens at Pictona in the Hometown News

 

 

Annual Report from Rainer

We opened officially July 15, 2020 and now have been in operation six months. An amazing amount has happened at Pictona in that short time. We have nearly 600 members with about 140 of you coming to play each day. We have many visitors coming from around the state to play at Pictona. As a member of the Pictona Club, here is information that should be of interest you.

Financial

Our income comes from these sources:

            Membership Dues                 $192,500

            Donations/sponsorships      $116,000

            Kitchen sales                             $80,000

            Player shop                               $30,600

            Tournament                              $37,200

            Instruction                                   $7850

                        Total                                                   $464,150

 

Our cost of goods sold (Kitchen & player shop)        $86,600

Expenses

            Payroll                                    $217,400

            Office Supplies                          $27,250

            Maintenance                             $43,400

            Tournament                              $11,350

                        Total                                                   $299,400

 

Net income                                                                     $78,150

 

We doubled our projection of members. Thank you. And we have been fortunate to obtain several major sponsorships. Our tournament was quite profitable for us. The Kitchen underperformed significantly. Covid-19, personnel, and menu options appear to be the major factors reducing sales. More about the Kitchen below.

 

Employees

 

We employ 16 people, 5 full-time and 11 part-time.

            Judy Ginn, General Manager

            Sarah Lockett, Assistant Manager/Event Manager

            Josh Ricasolo, Kitchen Manager

            Rynn Goldstein, Senior Activity Center Manager

            Vanessa Martinez, Maintenance

 

They are assisted by

            Adria Kelley, Welcome Desk

            Al Heilman, Welcome Desk

            Keith Howell, Welcome Desk

            Richard Dunn, Maintenance

            Roger Wolford, Welcome Desk

            Sigrid Preissler, Welcome Desk

            Briana Stavoloa, Server

            Paige Clouse, Server

            Boez Link, Cook

 

New Board

 

We have a new Pictona Club Board who looks after your interests:

            Dan Boyle, President

            Andy Melville, Vice President

            Cris Higgins, Secretary

            Terri Jacobsen, Treasurer

            Mimi Cook, Past President

            Bonnie Melville, Membership Director

            Harold Wheeler, USA Pickleball Ambassador, ex officio member

            Julie Martens, ex officio member

            Rainer Martens, ex officio member

 

We owe a debt of gratitude to our past board: Mimi Cook, president, Connie Wilson, Communication Director, and Chuck Mecklem, treasurer. Our VP and secretary had resigned earlier in the year.

 

Volunteers

 

Much of what we do is made possible by you volunteering to help. We had 100+ members help with the Fall Vintage tournament. We have members teaching classes, helping with our youth program, making minor repairs, and serving as ambassadors. I’m unable to name everyone so I won’t name any of you. But please know your help is appreciated, keeping our operating costs lower and helping each other to enjoy Pictona. Thank you!

 

Instruction

 

At your request, we developed a series of courses for members and non-members. Here are some stats for you:

            PB101 – 50 classes with 450 students

            70 became members (15%)

            PB110 – 4 classes with 25 students

            PB201 – 13 classes with 87 students

            PB301 – 8 classes with 47 participants

We had one clinic (group instruction) conducted by Coach Mo, Richard Movsessian. We have an outstanding group of private instructors with whom you can schedule sessions.

Sylvia Whitehouse

David Heinze

Scott Siewert

Mike Pascale

Lu Kandt

 

We appointed Lu Kandt as our Instructional Program Director beginning January 1, 2021. Lu will coordinate our courses and clinics and serve as the liaison with the private instructors.

Education

Our ambition at Pictona is to be a leading educational center for the sport of pickleball. Besides the instructional courses described above, we have done and are doing the following educational activities.

Court Utilization

With the cooler weather players have shifted from courts 1-8 (under cover) to the 16 outdoor courts. There have been a few occasions when all the outdoor courts are in use, mainly on the weekends.

We continually monitor how our 24 courts are being used. At your request we reserved courts and times for novice play, intermediate play, and advanced play. We have designated certain courts for various skill levels. And we launched the ladder tournament. We’ll begin league play in February.

Tournaments

The Fall Vintage Tournament was a big success. We had 635 players and nearly 100 volunteers help conduct the event. We netted $32,000 which helps support your club.

Our next event is the Florida Cup to be held March 27th, a one-day event for “team” pickleball. Teams of six players, gender-neutral, will comprise a team. Teams will play each other (3 matches) organized by 4 skill levels – 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, and 4.5. You’ll learn more about this event soon.

The Humana-Island Doctors Bainbridge Cup will be held here April 7-11, a 5-day international tournament. We expect 700-900 players. Pictona has a special arrangement whereby we get to advance register 100 players at a $10 discount from the $125 fee. This tournament is organized by skill and age so I encourage you to participate in this special opportunity. You’ll be playing at your level of pickleball.

We thought we would be hosting the Atlantic South Regional Tournament in October but after 7 months of extending a contract to the organizers they decided not to hold the tournament at Pictona. We have replaced that event with the 2ndAnnual Fall Vintage Tournament which will be held on the same dates, October 21-24, 2021, a 4-day event.

Facility

We continue to make minor improvements to Pictona. The restrooms in Preservation Palace have been fully renovated thanks to Bill Cook. We will install new fans on those restroom walls.

We installed windscreens on the 8 covered courts to reduce the backlight problem when looking south. We battle those windscreens when it gets windy and have had trouble keeping the support wires connected but have now fixed those – again.

Bill also built a 4-foot wall along courts 1-2 to keep water from washing onto the courts. Thanks Bill.

New picnic tables in the Pavilion and by court 8. More squeegees for removing water on the court.

Kitchen

It’s a challenging service that we want to provide to our members and open to the public. We had our kitchen manager and his cooks inexplicitly walk out. We closed the Kitchen, hired a new Kitchen Manager – Josh Ricasolo – and new staff and reopened in late November. Based on your responses to a survey about the menu we made changes. Our topsellers are burgers, California chicken wrap, and chicken wings. We added more wraps, flatbreads, smoothies, and quiche. Just this week we have begun offering Pick 2 – your choice of a cup of soup, small salad, or half a sandwich for $7.

We’re working to improve the turnaround time from when you order to when the food is served. Our challenge is to not over-staff but to have enough help on hand when we get busy. We appreciate your understanding when we have an unexpected rush.

Please keep in mind that the Kitchen is a service for our members, for you. When the Kitchen is profitable it helps support Pictona. When it is not we have to look at raising membership dues. I’m happy to report that sales have been increasing the last two weeks. If you haven’t visited us lately, stop in for some delicious food, a smoothie, or nice cold beer.

We welcome your continued feedback about the Kitchen menu and service. Insert your comments in the suggestion box located on the counter or access the Suggestion box on our website.  

Player Shop

Julie Martens has overseen the development of the Player Shop. Paddles and balls are our best sellers, with paddles from seven different manufacturers available for you to demo before purchasing. We have lots of different shirts available with our Pictona logo and we carry a full line of Pickleball Bella skirts and tops for the ladies. If you are looking for a pickleball gift for someone special, check out our thermal cups (perfect for evening happy hour!), towels, and hats. And in the near future Pictona gift cards will be available to use in the Player Shop and the Kitchen.

Table Tennis

We don’t know what happened to our table tennis club. We surmise that they found it difficult to play with masks on which we required. So the tables are there as well as a table tennis ball machine to practice hitting. Give the game a try when its cool outside.

Recreation Games

Have you tried your hand at shuffleboard, croquet, bocce ball, or horseshoes? They are all there waiting for you, and now you can put your skill in these sports to a test in the world-renowned Martens Cup. Play begins in February. Register at the Welcome Desk.

Harold Wheeler chairs a croquet club that plays every Wednesday morning at 9:30 am. You are invited to join in. You’ll have an opportunity to dethrone the current champion – that’s me.

Senior Activity Center

Directed by Rynn Goldstein and through the generous support of Florida Health Care Plans, we offer the recreational games to the community at no charge, and we host a series of fitness and wellness classes. Check with the Welcome Desk, ask Rynn, or go to https://pictona.org/senior-activity-center/ to learn more.

Community Gardens

We have an outstanding Garden Club who oversees our children and adult gardens as well as our hydroponic garden. Yes, we are growing lettuce in the hydroponic towers to be served in our Kitchen. When have you last had fresh cut lettuce in your salad?

Website

We’ve put a lot of effort into providing you with an informative Pictona website. Check it out every day for updates.

More News

Whoaa! There is more to tell you about our Membership Committee’s activities, Sarah’s event planning, Rynn’s work with community agencies, but this update is getting too long. I’ll share more with you in the February update.

When you get a chance thank our staff for their work to provide you with not only outstanding facilities but great programs and services.

 

Rainer Martens

 

 

Wednesday, January 27th

 Pictona Honors our First Responders with a Day of Pickleball!

Thank you for your service

Bring your employee badge or ID to PICTONA at Holly Hill

 on Wednesday, January 27, 2021 from 8 am – 9 pm for a FREE, fun-filled day of Pickleball and so much more!

                 

Haven’t heard of Pickleball?

     FREE Pickleball 101 classes will be offered at 10:00 am, 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm 

What do you need?

 

Come Join the Fun at Pictona!

1060 Ridgewood Ave

Holly Hill 32117

386 310 7067

 

 

Did you know that:

Come and hear about these and all the new rules for 2021

(these go into effect on Monday, January 25, 2021)

Date:              Sunday, January 24, 2021

Time:             Session 1: 10:30 AM – 12:00 noon

                        Session 2: 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

                        Session 3: 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Call the Welcome Desk to register! 386 310 7067

Place:             Pictona Club, Holly Hill, FL

Cost:              FREE!

Presenter:    Dereck Prince

                        USA Pickleball Association Certified Referee

                        USA Pickleball Association Registered Pickleball Referee Trainer

Call the Welcome Desk to register! 386 310 7067

This week we still have availability in Pickleball 102 (Monday 18th @1:00pm) and a Specialty Class - focusing on 3rd Shot Drop (Tuesday 19th @ 10:00am) Go to our events calendar for more details.

LADDERS AND LEAGUES

We plan to continue the ladder into February and beyond. George Graber and Terri Small, the ladder managers, are seeking suggestions for improving the rules of play. You may contact them, drop a note in our suggestion box at the front desk, or through our website: https://pictona.org/about-pictona/suggestion-box/

Andy Melville is coordinating our plans for leagues which we hope to begin offering in mid-February. Standby for exciting news about this fun way to play pickleball.

It’s a good idea to check our website daily for Current News. And if you missed a day or two, you can retrieve the articles by going here: https://pictona.org/news-information/pictona-news/

Pictona Members

Here is your invitation to play in the Humana-Island Doctors Bainbridge Cup Tournament that will be held at Pictona April 7-11. You can learn more about the tournament, the exciting format that will be followed, and the pomp and ceremony that goes with the largest international pickleball tournament in the world at https://pictona.org/bc21/. From this location you will be able to link to Pickleball Tournaments.com to learn even more. But don’t try to register yet.

BC21 will have 5 skill levels (3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0) and 8 age groups (19+, 35+, 50+, 55+, 60+ 65+, 70+, and 75+) for men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. Singles will be a demonstration event and is not part of the registration process described below. For this international event the competition will be between the EAST and the WEST. The East is east of the Mississippi along with Europe and the West is west of the river along with Asia.

Pictona members will have two opportunities to register for the tournament. The first is a special arrangement with the International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) to permit 100 of our members to register for the tournament before the general registration and to receive a $10 discount off the $125 registration fee. The second opportunity is to register during the general registration period.

We hope you will want to play in BC21. If we have more than 100 players apply for early registration, we will have to select the players for early guaranteed entry. To do so we are limited by the IFP in the number of players we can assign to any one age/skill bracket. There are 40 brackets. We need to do so separately for men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles, providing equal places for men and women. Partners may or may not be members of Pictona which influences the number of Pictona registrants selected. And the IFP requires us to divide equally our 100 registrants into East and West teams.  You may specify a preference on your registration form, and we’ll do our best to assign you to that team. 

As you can see the registration distribution is complex. We will be able to select members for one or more of the available places in each bracket only after we know who has applied to enter the tournament. The distribution of entries will not be equal across the 40 brackets for each of the 3 events (Men, Women, Mixed). We will have a quota of the number of teams in each bracket, with the more popular brackets accepting more entries up to the limits set by the IFP. If we have more players registered in a bracket than we can accept, we will randomly select the players from the pool of registrants in that bracket. We will not select registrants on the basis of any other criteria. Remember, however, if you are not accepted into the 100 pre-registrants, you have a second opportunity to register during the general registration just as you would do for any other tournament. Also know that there will be waiting lists created when registrations exceed the initial limits per bracket set by the IFP, and then when registrations are complete and certain brackets are not filled to their limit, people on waiting lists will be invited to play.   You may enter without having a partner, but if you do not have a partner before registration ends on February 14th, you will be dropped from the tournament.

One additional item:  Both you and your partner must be members of USA Pickleball to play in the tournament.  Annual membership is $20 and you may join at https://usapickleball.org.

Don’t let all of this complexity scare you away. We encourage all members of Pictona to pre-register for the 100 places available to us. Here is what to do.

  1. Team up with your partner to determine what skill level your team should enter for the tournament. If either you or your partner has a USA Pickleball UTPR rating, you must enter at the higher level between the two of you.  If you don’t have UTPR ratings, please self-rate.  (If you are unsure how to rate yourselves, please ask us for help.)  To determine what age bracket to enter, you must enter the age bracket of the younger of the two partners as of December 31, 2021. Your partner does not have to be a member of Pictona. If you enter two events, you obviously will have two different partners.  You may also indicate if you are interested in playing singles.
  2. Submit your request to play in the tournament by completing the registration form available at the Pictona Welcome desk or download it from the BC21 section of the Tournaments tab on the Pictona website . You must submit this application in person at Pictona by the end of the day on Wednesday, January 20th to be eligible for pre-registration. Form
  3. When our member registration deadline ends, we will review the pool of registrants to determine the distribution of players by skill and age for men’s, women’s, and mixed doubles. If we have more players in a skill/age bracket than the BC21 will allow, we will randomly select the teams that are invited to register. We suggest both you and your partner, if a Pictona member, complete registration forms so if we randomly select teams you will have a better chance of being selected.
  4. Once you are selected as one of the 100 players, you will also be assigned to the East or West team with us trying to accommodate your preference if you have one.
  5. Next, each player selected to play in BC21 will then be sent a link to register at PickleballTournaments.com at the discounted price of $115. This registration window will be very short. You must register on January 28 or January 29th.  Otherwise you will not be guaranteed a spot in the tournament or receive the discounted price. 
  6. Payment for the tournament will not be collected until after registration closes and as many people as possible have been moved from the waitlists into the tournament. You will have several days to pay the fee online.
  7. f you were not selected in the 100 pre-registration, you will want to register at PickleballTournaments.com beginning January 30, 2021

We look forward to your participation in this international event.

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