To all Soo Pickleball Club members:

Our club membership at the end of 2024 was approximately 700! The membership at The Tech for the winter of 2024-2025 is approximately 200. The membership at The Clergue is approximately 130. As we grow, skill levels are becoming a challenge, especially during the Skill Level sessions at Tech, leagues and tournaments.

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The executive has been trying to develop a way to get more accurate skill levels for each member so that we can provide better programming and a better experience for all players in Soo Pickleball. We have discussed and researched several systems but they all require a lot of volunteers and time. Most systems also involve people judging people. We have decided that the fairest way to get things started is by using DUPR more widely.

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Dynamic Ultimate Pickleball Rating (DUPR) has over 1 million players in its database. With DUPR, the more DUPR associated games you play, the more accurate your skill level rating becomes. Your game results will be entered into the database and your skill level will be compared to the skill levels of the players you played with and against. Your results will affect a change in your skill level. Recreational game scores can be entered by individual players but have only a small effect on your level. Leagues have a larger effect, club tournaments have a larger effect again, and then sanctioned tournaments have the largest effect.

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The executive would like to start by putting on DUPR rating sessions. These sessions will be held for certain specified skill levels. They will be club run, small and quick events that will only take a couple of hours to play out. This will get players enough games in to start building a reliable skill level. As more and more members obtain reliable skill levels the executive can offer better programming and events so that players can play with their peer group and have an opportunity to play with players rated higher than themselves to progress up the skill level ladder. Most, or all club leagues and tournaments would become DUPR events and doing well in these events would improve a player’s rating more quickly. For those members not wishing to participate in a DUPR stream of events the “self-rating” system will remain in place (more details will be determined regarding that in the fall).

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We encourage you all to to set up a DUPR account and to take part in our Soo Pickleball DUPR sessions and events! All you need is an email address and a profile name which can be as simple as you like. No personal information is attached to your profile. Please go onto the DUPR website and explore it. There are Q&A sections which will explain better how the system works. www.dupr.com 

DUPR is also an APP on your phone.