Pickleball at Cedarbrae
Pickleball at the Cedarbrae Community Centre is a big deal! Most days our gym is fully booked with pickleball for eight, sometimes ten hours, covering many levels of play, ball machine practice and ongoing lessons. There are nearly 400 registered players, lots of people with lots of ideas for how the program should run. Add to that the ever fluid nature of a volunteer board of directors, the challenge of a non-profit budget and the limits of our space and you’ve got a real test of skill and patience for the brave soul willing to make it all work. Cedarbrae is lucky though, we have Cathie Heys.
Cathie is relatively new to pickleball, picking it up within the last four years, taking lessons to start and growing quickly into a competent player. She came to love the culture of fun around the game and love that it was possible to become proficient in a relatively short time. She knew that sports can be intimidating, even rough. Pickleball however is accepting, exciting, and a real pleasure to play. Hearing good things from friends who played at Cedarbrae, Cathie came in to check us out. Right away she could see the potential, a smaller facility with room to grow and improve.
Cathie made herself available to the Board of Directors, attending several special meetings to work out the best way forward. She cut the physical administrative paperwork to almost nothing and streamlined the sign-up processes. She spoke to Cedarbrae players of every level and noted their concerns, crafting a real push to make the rotation and timing of differing play levels fair and balanced. She instituted rules, best practices, and standards so that everyone was on the same page. Most of all she worked and reworked the monthly schedules to ensure they were fairer to more players. All Cathie’s hard work has paid off, making Cedarbrae’s pickleball program more accessible, unbiased, and a great place for new players to make their way into the game.
This is what volunteering can be, taking your passion for something and turning it into real world action. Cathie had some volunteer Board experience previous to Cedarbrae, but she’d be the first to tell you that experience isn’t necessary. What’s needed is a willingness to help out. Cathie had a vision for what Cedarbrae pickleball could be and turned the program around so that everyone could share in the fun she had found. In the process like all our volunteers Cathie found many rewards, a renewed sense of purpose, friendships, and the strength found in challenges overcome.
Sometimes it feels like the same people show up to volunteer over and over again, but every now and then someone new, full of passion and drive joins our ranks. You can be that new volunteer, come join us, find your place and like Cathie you may discover you’ll have so much fun doing it!
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