Pickleballers Play Aggressive Enjoyable In Daylong Harwich Event

HARWICH – More than 100 gamers competed in 260 pickleball matches Saturday through the twelfth version of what’s the largest and longest-running event of its form on Cape Cod. 

In the top (after a number of hours, a full day’s price of pickleball), the Harwich Funfest topped winners in six divisions (all doubles) — ladies’s, males’s and combined break up by skill in intermediate and superior swimming pools — in an occasion the place the ability appears to maintain rising every event, in accordance with Tom Bryant, president of the internet hosting Harwich Pickleball Association.

“They call it a funfest, and it was fun,” stated John Boyle, who received the lads’s intermediate division with Brian Devaney.

Bryant stated that this yr’s intermediate gamers had caught as much as final yr’s superior stage. The event is open to gamers above 50 years outdated, and the superior stage brings in a number of the elite gamers on the Cape to Brooks Park.

“The level of play goes up every year,” Bryant stated.

The ladies’s intermediate winners had been Kristen Zukowski and Amy Rice. The ladies’s superior winners had been SoonAe Bushing and Amy Hotchkiss.

Matches had been aggressive, and a number of gamers had been pickleball coaches and execs. Even so, a number of members underscored the enjoyable nature of the Harwich Funfest.

Corey Sprague, a Cape-area coach who received the lads’s superior bronze with Stephen Maurer, stated he was “just here to have fun.”

“No one’s taking it too seriously,” he stated. “If they are, they are at the wrong tournament.”

A majority of the funds from the occasion are donated by the Harwich Pickleball Association to numerous charities, just like the Harwich Children’s Fund and the Cape Cod Foster Closet. The non-profit group additionally offers a scholarship of $1,000 to a neighborhood highschool pupil. 

More than 30 volunteers organized and operated the event. Games for the roughly 130 gamers began at 8 a.m. in a round-robin format and continued previous 6 p.m. That made for a greater tempo than final yr’s event, which had matches going till sundown. 

Todd Zukowski and Nat Boughton, execs at Ocean Edge Resort and Golf Club in Brewster, received the lads’s superior pool. The win for the duo acted as a bit little bit of redemption, Zukowski stated, after they misplaced within the finals final yr. As a top-ranked staff enjoying on their residence courts (Zukowski stated they knew most likely three-quarters of the opposite gamers), the pair felt the strain. The wind at Brooks Park additionally made for a difficult day, in accordance with Boughton.

“You’ve really got to concentrate to adjust to the wind,” he stated.

The pickleball marathon concluded with combined doubles. Lisa Sherman of Harwich and Joe Cancelarich of Wellfleet took gold within the intermediate bracket. It was their first event, in order that they had been “psyched,” Sherman stated.

“The games were all excellent,” she stated. “Every single game we played was great.” 

And like others, Sherman stated that the occasion was, before everything, a funfest. It actually was enjoyable, she stated.