The Harding University Honors College held a doubles pickleball tournament last Friday, seeking to get honors students more involved in the honors community.
The tournament began at 6 p.m. on April 1 in the Ganus Activities Complex (GAC) gym. Senior honors Student Association (SA) treasurer Grant Countess served as the tournament’s coordinator along with freshman honors SA representative Garrett Blankenship. Countess said about 25 teams participated in the event.
The tournament started as a best two-out-of-three games, but Countess changed the set to only one game to speed up the tournament. The tournament lasted around an hour and 45 minutes, Countess said.
“I was really happy with the amount of time because 6 o’clock on a Friday night — nobody wants to spend four hours playing pickleball on a Friday night,” Countess said.
Sophomores Kade Walker and Garrett Glover won the tournament at the end of the evening, obtaining their second pickleball tournament win. They won their first one after competing in Harding’s intramural pickleball tournament earlier this semester.
“I think there was about 50 people there, so it was a nice turn out,” Walker said. “It was competitive and fun, and I would say it was an overall really, really good experience.”
Countess said the idea of a pickleball tournament for honors students was developed from one of their honors SA meetings. Blankenship said the event was a cool way to connect honors students outside of academic settings.
“Me and Grant Countess had just been talking about a way to get the Honors College more involved overall just with a fun activity,” Blankenship said. “And I don’t really know exactly who came up with the idea of a pickleball tournament, but we just took it randomly ‘cause it just sounds like a good idea.”
Countess said most of the work involved reserving courts in the GAC, coordinating around intramural games and club basketball, finding a convenient date and creating a Google Form for honors students to sign up.
Countess said as far as he knows, the event marked the first time the honors SA has hosted a pickleball tournament, and he hopes to host another tournament next year.
“This can be our first annual, and next year I’m looking forward to hosting a second one,” Countess said. “So if anybody else is around to help and get that going as long as we have participants, I think this could be a yearly kind of thing we do.”
