Volunteers Needed

The Palm Creek Pickleball Club Training Department needs your help as an instructor! As you know we conduct a full program of training suitable to almost all pickleball players, no matter their skill level. This year we will offer at least a dozen different courses, all of them run entirely by volunteers from within the club.

Our intention, this year, is to have three instructors for each class, and with only a few exceptions to have no instructor required to do more than one class. Each class will (probably) be repeated once, so there will be two occurrences of each class. What this means is that each volunteer instructor will only help instruct one class, and do that class only two times...a total commitment of about four hours. (Each class will have about one hour of instruction and one hour of supervised play.)

Given that we would like to see three instructors at each class, with a dozen courses this means we have room for as many as 36 instructors, and right now we only have a dozen.

Would you like to help as an instructor? Even if you haven't had a specific background in teaching, coaching, consulting, mentoring or the like, you're still welcome if you have reasonable communication skills and the willingness to help other fellow players get better.....and the benefits to you are several:
1. You give back to your club and help your fellow players.
2. You build or tune up your teaching and coaching skills
3. You learn how to teach certain aspects of pickleball that you can then use at "home" when you return after the winter season...to help your friends and fellow players there
4. You yourself will undoubtedly learn as much as you teach...funny that it works that way, but it's true...and it's true no matter how good you already are!

What are the requirements for an instructor here? There are only a few:
1. You should be willing to make a commitment of about 8 hours spread over a month....four hours to learn the course content (all the course design is already completed or will soon be completed) and two two-hour blocks of conducting the one course. Depending on the course this commitment will need to be met between January and April of 2012.
2. You should have pretty good communications skills. This only means that you are willing to work with people, take them at the levels you find them, and show them and help them to become better players. This does not mean that you are a great public speaker....entirely unnecessary!
3. You should currently be playing at a 3.5 level or above. If you are playing below that level but have a strong desire to help, let us know and we may be able to work with you...but a few of the courses will require at least 3.5-level skills. (Being rated at 3.5 or above is NOT necessary...we're not talking here about USAPA ratings, we're talking about your playing level.)
If you are interested, please email me directly! My email address is ajfraties@gmail. com. Thanks very much!

A. J. Fraties

Training Coordinator