On Monday, April 14th, JLC hosted its third annual pickleball tournament. This tournament was part of JLC’s annual impact project with the Chick-fil-A Leadership Academy.
Making the project annual was a part of JLC teacher Lauren Stringers’ hope to create a project that would help students at the school.
“We do the Chick-fil-A Leadership Academy every year, and they require us to have an impact project,” Stringer said. “Two years ago, we created an impact project to support students that might not have their needs met. So we wanted to bring the school community fun and also have an impact, where the funds go to students here at Mill Valley.”
Since this impact project is important, Stringer and JLC put lots of hard work and planning into this event.
“Months of planning went into the pickleball event. We have the bracket, and we have the raffle for our impact,” Stringer said. “We had the goal of having 80 teams, but we have 82 teams, and we wanted to use both courts, so court reservation, and making sure that there’s enough materials.”
JLC member junior Jamie Ricker chose to participate in the pickleball tournament to add more teams to the game, ensuring the initial goal of 80 teams was reached.
“[For JLC members] there was either the option to play and add more teams, to be a ref or work the check in and the concession stand. So I chose to play and fill in refereeing,” Ricker said. “It’s when a team ref leaves, I fill in. I fill in checking out if there needs to be a break, so I’m just a helper. But I’m adding more people to the pickleball experience.”
Ricker has little experience with the JLC’s pickleball tournament, and this was her first year participating in it.
“It’s my first year doing it, but I heard from other people how much fun it was and that it took a lot of planning, so I just wanted a good outcome,” Ricker said.
Other than JLC members, freshman Stella Goodman and freshman Carly Hayes played together in the tournament. Their team name was Pink Sparkle Squad.
Hayes wanted to have fun in the tournament and enjoyed playing.
“[Our objective was to] not lose and just have some fun,” Hayes said,” Also being able to see all my friends and just play.”
Although their team’s objective was to win, Goodman didn’t practice for the tournament.
“We went one time to the tennis courts over this past weekend, but that’s all,” Goodman said.
Goodman’s main reason for joining the pickleball tournament was to have fun and support JLC.
“We joined [the pickleball tournament] because we thought it would be fun. And one of my best friends, senior Josie Mason, does JLC, and I wanted to be able to support her,” Goodman said.
