2021 English Nationals - A covid success
As there have been no large tournaments for the past 18 months, we decided that for this year, the English Nationals, which would normally only be open to residents of England, will be open to all UK residents.
The English Nationals, sponsored by Franklin Pickleball were held at Bolton Arena from 12-15 August 2021. 237 players attended the event plus family spectators and volunteers.
Over 2 weeks after the tournament, we are not aware of any players contracting covid, so we consider the tournament a covid success.
Thanks to everyone that followed our guidelines. We did see that some players couldn’t help themselves hugging other players, demonstrating what a friendly sport pickleball is!
We hired a sports photographer for the event. Paul Currie took some fabulous pictures of players. We will make the pictures available here as soon as we have loaded them.
In the meantime, you can find details and pictures of all the medal winners here.
We had live-streaming of matches on court 9 on Saturday and Sunday. Links to all the matches can be found here.
Pickleball England Tournament Software (PETS) was used to schedule over 1040 games over 34 events. You can see all of the event brackets, results and medallists on the software by clicking the link below.
COVID MITIGATION PLAN
With the lifting of legal restrictions we recognised that we could proceed with the Nationals but with covid cases continuing to rise and of concern. Our players safety is important to us, so put in place measures to ensure that we could minimise the risk for players. We agreed on a covid mitigation plan (see below) and successfully executed it for players, spectators and volunteers.
Players were sent a briefing document. You can access that document here.
2022 English OPEN update
The 2022 English OPEN dates have been set 30th June to 3rd July 2022. We will announce the venue as soon as we have final agreement in place.
We were really looking forward to hosting the APP Tour and players at the 2021 English OPEN which we sadly had to cancel.
We have already confirmed we will be part of the APP 2022 Tour which will also include the French Open and Spanish Open so that Europe has it’s own Grand Slam!
There will be prize money up for grabs for the 5.0+ events.
We plan to offer clinics with professional players on recreational play day.
We hope to include a ProAm event on Singles day.
We hope you are starting to get excited already!
