South East England Doubles League
Results of 15th May Doubles League
There was a change of venue for SE Doubles League and a different time of day – Sunday afternoon rather than Saturday evening. Richard Challenor School in New Malden proved to be a hit. I was still nursing a cough so I couldn’t play but I had the privilege of watching some fantastic play on all courts. As there were a number of new people at the league, we decided to assess results at half time to give any clear winners the chance to go up a court. For many, they were playing with a ball they hadn’t used before and it takes time to get used to a new ball.
What I love about Doubles League is that it is gender neutral and everyone is playing for themselves playing with and against everyone else. Some players you gel with in a partnership and others you don’t. I noticed a few people discussing their strategy to help them maximise their partnership. Louise for instance taught Paul and Kevin how to stack to maximise their left hand forehand in the middle. The London Pickleball players are really good at dinking and when they were able to get into dink rallies they demonstrated their prowess. Some players like to hit the ball hard. Not that hitting the ball hard always resulted in winners. I noticed that Neil won all his matches on courts 2/3 which meant he went up to court 1 at half time but his style of play which was effective on courts 2/3 didn’t work on court 1 where they were less likely to hit a ball that would go out. There were also a few illegal serves called on the day; some people didn’t call the score or called it whilst they were walking into position with their backs to the opponents! There were some foot faults, there were balls put into the net because of overstretching rather than moving feet, there were lobs due to impatience. Doubles League is the ideal environment to identify these things and work on them.
What thrilled me about Sunday was that Jang Evans, the only female on court 1 was top of the leader board on the day, beating all the guys – well done Jang! I would like to think that Jang will believe that her red ‘Join the pickleball movement’ t-shirt is her lucky shirt now! Mark Johnson who is 2nd on the leaderboard of the Welsh Dragon League, came 3rd (on points difference) on court 1 – great play Mark.
The next SE Doubles League is Sunday 19th June. A registration link will be added here as soon as available.
Venue: Richard Challenor School, New Malden, Surrey KT3 5PE. Arrive 1.45pm Play from 2-6pm. £15.
Results of 19th March Doubles League
This was the last doubles league at Maidstone, at least for a few months. April is busy so we are missing this month. For May we are going to try a different time of day and venue. Congratulations to Malcolm Skates who was overall winner on Court 1 and Andrew Larsen who was overall winner on court 4. Courts 1 and 4 also mixed together in the middle and Andrew Larsen came top on that court too!
19th February 2022 Results
Congratulations to Chris Mitchell and Lynn Jacobs for winning their respective groups on Saturday. As there were 16 players this month, we had two groups of 8 and the only way to ensure that we got through all 14 matches was to time the matches. It made for a fast paced evening with only a couple of minutes between games but everyone seemed to enjoy the challenge!
15th January 2022 Results
We had a full house for Saturday before 2 had to drop out for different reasons. An accident on the M20 meant that not all players arrived for the start of the evening so some juggling had to be done. Not quite all the games could be completed. Congrats to Daniel and Vanessa who were top of Group 1 and Group 2 respectively.
11th December Results
With just 2 weeks since the last league, and some last minute withdrawals for various reasons the numbers were a bit light for our Christmas League evening. Nevertheless it was a fun evening with even more matches than ever.
We had two groups, Santa’s Reindeers and Santa’s Helpers. Then we added a mash up of both groups so that the players that were resting were put into teams competing to win the third competition.
There were lovely boxes of chocolates for 1st place on each court and a chocolate Santa for 2nd place.
Chris Mitchell was obviously incentivised by the chocolate because he won both court 1 and court 2. Vanessa won court 3.
David Bungard won a box of Quality Street for the best Christmas outfit. Thanks everyone for lots of great games. The next League night is 15th January, 2022. Register here.
27th November Results
Lots of very close games this month! 5 games that went 11-10 and 6 that went 11-9 probably left the losing team wishing the games went to win by 2 instead of win by 1! A bad traffic accident delayed two players from court 4 but the other players were given great warm up games with Chris joining court 4 for the first game, David & Scotty for the second game and Gillian for the third game before the delayed players could join in. The group still managed to finish all but two of their games! Karen did her first ATP at Doubles League!
Huge congrats to the winners on each court: Christ Mitchell, Steve White, Daniel Kellard and Rod Lambert.
Christmas Doubles League is 11th December. There will be prizes awarded for the winners of each court! Register here.
25th September Results
There were several new faces at this month’s Doubles League. Players got between 9 and 12 games depending on which court they were on. Chris Mitchell kept a clean sheet not dropping a game all evening, despite some very close games. The last time there was a clean sheet was last August when Louis Laville played and won 8 games. There is no Doubles League in October but we are back 27th November. There will also be a Christmas special league on Saturday 11th December.
28th August Results
Summer holidays took their toll so we had just 18 players at the last session. That gave us a chance to change the format slightly. Two groups of 9 so that people got to play with and against more people in the evening. Sadly, Bill got injured in his 9th game and had to retire. We also had a retirement in group 2. Retirements meant that an unequal number of games were played by all players, so the standings table has been calculated using % games won.
31st July Results
A good evening was had by all except Kevin who had to retire due to a twist to his knee. Luckily we had one group of 6 so Janet volunteered to make the 5 up on court 3. This means that there were two parts to the event for courts 3 and 4. Just glad that we could adapt on the fly and still ensure everyone got plenty of games. Lisa didn’t like the ball but she found a way to play with it, finishing 2nd in the standings!
26th June Results
We had 3 courts of 5 on the 26th, partly because of Eastbourne Tennis and partly because someone had to cancel at the last minute as they had been contacted by Track & Trace. We truly appreciate the sacrifice that person made by following the rules and protecting everyone from Covid-19.
It was good to see Steve White back in action with his new knee! There must have been some very long matches because, unusually, not all the games were played this time!
29th May Results
Our first session was Saturday 29th May. 24 players pleased to be back competing against each other. Here are the results.
Future league sessions have been booked for: 26th June, 31st July, 28th August, 25th Sept, 30th Oct, 27th Nov, 18th Dec.
2020
The relaxing of lockdown meant that we were able to stage a socially distanced Doubles League on 8th and 24th August, 5th and 19th September. We were limited to 24 players over 4 courts and 6 players were allocated to a court with curtains dividing the courts. Each player played with everyone and against everyone on their court, for a minimum of 8 games but in most cases 10 games over the evening. It was lovely to see so many happy faces on all of these evenings. The results are displayed below. Several games were recorded on the first 3 sessions. Links to the videos are here.
Our session on #WorldPickleballDay 10.10.20 – was filled within 48 hours of registration opening. We thought it would be appropriate to give the session a twist by seeing how many games we could get through in a 200 minute timeframe. The answer is 113! Rally scoring really speeded games up. Instead of an average of 16 minute games, games took between 6.6-7.4 minutes.
Doubles League Dates for 2020
Season 2020-1
Season 2020-2
Season 2020-3
- 11th January
- 15th February
- 14th March
- 11th April
- 9th May
- 13th June
- 11th July
- 8th August
- 19th September
- 10th October
- 14th November
- 12th December
SOUTHERN ENGLAND Singles League 2019
The SE Singles League met at Maidstone YMCA for 10 months and raised over £500 for pickleballEngland.
The idea of the Singles League was to give players an opportunity to practise their singles game and to improve their skills in a competitive environment. Often it isn’t possible to have singles play in club sessions due to the number of people waiting for games. Of course singles is also an excellent work out to get in shape!
The final results and medal winners can be found on the October Results page which you can access below.
This League has now been replaced by the Doubles League.
Monthly Results with YTD League Tables
There is a page covering each month’s play. Click on the button for the month you are interested in!
