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Paddle testing & design with USA Pickleball's Director of Equipment & facilities
204 Plays2 years ago
I talk with Carl Schmits, Managing Director of Equipment Standards and Facilities Development over at USA Pickleball. We talk about paddle delamination, thermoforming, facilities and courts, paddle testing, his background and how it shaped who he is, and his perspective on the current landscape of the sport and what aspects can and will keep it from growing.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:04 Guest introduction
03:02 New testing tool Optical Scanning Platform
05:45 What is the scanner looking for?
07:30 Travis Rettenmeier and PPA Red Rocks
09:25 What about paddles already out on the market
09:54 Delamination
12:10 Evolution of paddles
14:20 How to detect delamination
17:15 What is USAP’s role in disputes and conflicts in competition
18:45 How does PPA not being USAP sanctioned effect the tournament?
21:12 How quickly does the testing provide results?
24:20 What paddle does Carl use?
25:22 MLP Daytona thoughts
27:01 What do you think is the best way to regulate the standards for testing
31:31 Benefit of open throat paddle design
34:30 Carl's background before Pickleball
44:30 Facilities design and development
50:00 USAP updates
57:18 Advice
01:00:40 Closing, info, resources
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Transcript
The Explosion of Pickleball Paddle Models
00:00:00
Speaker
There was only one on the market up until late 21. At the end of 21, we saw about eight come to market, eight models from just a couple of manufacturers. But we anticipate close to 130 being introduced this year.
The Growing Popularity and Challenges of Pickleball
00:00:15
Speaker
The unintended consequences of both of these directions in these sports was they left the recreational athletes behind. In many cases, a member won't know that's the problem, right? They'll just feel like I didn't play very well.
00:00:29
Speaker
when in fact it's because right now this is the most growth and activity the sport of pickleball has ever seen. Participation is at its highest at 36.5 million total players in the U
The State of Pickleball Facilities and Enthusiasm
00:00:41
Speaker
.S. And court development is growing increasingly. According to USA Pickleball's 2022 stats, there are 44,000 pickleball courts, 237 sanctioned events, and 138 community and youth collegiate grants.
00:00:54
Speaker
We all want everyone we know to try pickleball. Actually, we're unknowingly enthusiastic about it. However, most of the people playing don't really know what things like delamination or thermoforming is or even really paddle testing and how it affects them and the sport.
Insights from Carl Schmitz on Pickleball Regulations
00:01:12
Speaker
My guest in this episode, Carl Schmitz, covers the regulations and testing regarding equipment
00:01:17
Speaker
specifically paddles, the design of paddles like open throat paddles, and he shares a ton of insights into how to optimize the business of building a pickleball facility and courts. Carl also mentions a new facility here in the US that has 41 courts. And he also talks about how USAP is working on solving one of the biggest problems as to why pickleball isn't growing in neighborhoods and communities.
00:01:47
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Building Pickleball, where I am documenting the fastest growing sport. I really trust trying to share different stories within Pickleball, ranging from founders to players to folks who are working within the businesses of Pickleball as well, such as USA Pickleball. My guest today is Carl Schmitz. He is the managing director of
00:02:08
Speaker
equipment standards and facilities development at USA Pickleball. He's been on the equipment side since 2016. He spent 16 years at Intel. He's a level two certified professional pickleball instructor, and he is a founder of Pro Pickleball Media. Thanks for joining me today, Carl. Thanks for having me, Brian.
00:02:28
Speaker
How come you aren't at BPA RedRock?
Technological Advances in Paddle Testing
00:02:31
Speaker
What we're doing is evaluating what tool sets to use for the next event. More than likely we'll be at the Newport event here in just a few weeks with some new tools that we'll be bringing in to do
00:02:45
Speaker
ultrasonic testing for delamination, as well as we'll likely be bringing down our new optical scanning platform, which is a much more accurate, much more repeatable and consistent platform for testing surface roughness. Where did that optical scanning platform come from? Is this something that new that you're introducing or has this been around?
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's a mature technology. However, what we've seen over the last 18 months is a proliferation of paddles that are really pushing the specifications when it comes to roughness. And I'll do this in air quotes, the raw carbon phase paddles. We've seen that there was only one on the market up until late 21.
00:03:33
Speaker
After that, at the end of 2021, we saw about eight come to market, eight models from just a couple of manufacturers, but we anticipate close to 130 being introduced this year, right? And so, and then there was a number in between that for 2022. So, because the paddle manufacturers are really starting to push the envelope in terms of specification, what had been used over the last several years was to steer it
00:04:02
Speaker
160, SR 160. And then at the end of last year, once we started implementing paddle control testing, for example, at the national, CSA-Pigilval Nationals, we used an SR 300, which is slightly more sophisticated.
00:04:21
Speaker
It's still a stylus profileometer, so it still uses the old older piezoelectric-type pickup, almost like a phonograph needle that rakes across the top of the paddle, but it was significantly more accurate than the SR160 that we've been using and provides a good transition to this new technology which uses optical scanning. It's non-contact, uses something called white light interferometry,
00:04:48
Speaker
And with that, it will map thousands of points of data that we'll be able to analyze and assess whether or not a paddle's surface meets the standards. The process of migrating from this older technology and what were our value
00:05:04
Speaker
R-value measurements, RT and RZ, which most of the markets are familiar with now, will be migrating that using quite a bit of corollary testing and will migrate across to S-values, which will allow us to actually scan a portion of the surface of the paddle face.
00:05:21
Speaker
The main thing that's being tested is that surface of the paddle. Previously, the SR300 was something that actually touched the surface, and the new optical scanner, it doesn't touch at all. It's literally just scanning it. Not to give anyone any ideas of how to find a loophole around it, but
00:05:44
Speaker
What exactly, if you could explain it like I'm like an eight year old, because that's kind of as far as my knowledge, that's kind of as far as I can go with it, what is it looking for? What it's looking for would be extreme peak to valley measurements. And that's what the stylists did for us before. But with the stylists, what we would do is take six axial measurements and then average them out. The challenge we had was when you look at a micro level
00:06:14
Speaker
at the surface of these raw carbon fiber paddles that several of the manufacturers are coming out with here recently. This is a very familiar shape and paddle face. The stylus can actually work its way through that it's almost like a thread count and work its way through and yield a different result almost every on every occasion with just a slight movement. And so for the most part we were we were okay
00:06:43
Speaker
with the measurements and the averaging functions, but because there's such a high percentage of paddles now coming out with this more sophisticated face, the old-school way of measuring really isn't adequate to do it in a repeatable way. So we believe making this migration will help increase confidence, that everyone's blamed by the same rules out there, no one's trying to gain the system, and that the measurements being used for certification
00:07:13
Speaker
as well as for compliance, which is the aftermarket testing program, which we do. And then now we've been introducing this courtside paddle control, it's called, which is being used to tournaments to make sure that the players are using legal equipment as
Ensuring Compliance in Paddle Manufacturing
00:07:29
Speaker
well. Gosh, I have a ton of questions, but one thing that stuck out when you mentioned like just saying courtside, Travis Rhett and Meyer in this most recent event, in the singles event against Tyson McGuffin, he mentions,
00:07:41
Speaker
He's just like that paddle. Given the fact that they're both Selkirk athletes, given, I mean, you have to take into consideration that Tyson might have a different paddle, but Travis is like, that paddle sounds different. It's hitting different. You're making shots that are working, but it was a bad shot and it hit the paddles too.
00:08:00
Speaker
hit the paddle bad. So it sounds like this is going to be a huge impact as far as the courtside testing. The way Travis talked about it, it seemed like it's more reactive than proactive as far as how the regulations and compliance can handle a situation like this. Sure. This is new territory, frankly, but it's not like it hasn't been addressed and actually taken into consideration the existing rules.
00:08:26
Speaker
But back to the practical application of how we manage certification, compliance, and now paddle control. The certification is the stamp of approval that a paddles pass all the lab tests and those paddles that are shipped to market do meet the certification standards that everyone's agreed to.
00:08:51
Speaker
The compliance piece of this, again, is more of a market testing, you know, well, discretely sample paddles that are being shipped out in the market. But what we're essentially testing in that case is a new paddle, and we're just verifying that it has the same specifications as the one that passed originally. We're ramping up that program significantly because of the number of new paddles that have flooded the market over the last couple of years, and specifically the number of these rougher paddles as well. These still meet specification
00:09:20
Speaker
but they are very close to the tolerances. This last piece that you're talking about is what can happen to a paddle once it's out in the market and exposed to the elements. If there's any manipulation of the paddle, there needs to be a way of
00:09:36
Speaker
controlling that and double checking to make sure that a paddle that doesn't meet specifications is still being used to compete. Clearly the roughness side we can check with the steric meters and eventually with this optical scanner and that's the plan. This delamination issue is fairly new although it is addressed in rule 2E2. If a paddle does exhibit a delamination
00:10:04
Speaker
It's up to the player to retire it. It's a piece of equipment that no longer meets specification right there. So, you know, ideally a player notices this and says this is no longer a legal paddle because it's gone through some type of deterioration. And I think in this case Tyson had actually retired the paddle at the end of the first game. So that's, you know, to his credit. The way of detecting this
00:10:33
Speaker
There's actually a fairly mature technology. It's an ultrasonic bond tester that we've been evaluating over the last couple of events. We used it at the Austin event, the PPA Austin event. We had it with us at the NLP event as well and used it to start testing paddles. So the plan is to acquire one of these systems and start bringing it to the tournaments as well to where we can
00:11:01
Speaker
understand if the paddle has delaminated. In most cases the players are retiring them because while the paddle may spike in terms of additional
00:11:12
Speaker
coefficient of restitution or returned energy off the face of the paddle, it quickly loses control as well and becomes a tool that doesn't accomplish what the player is looking for. Most of the players that I've spoken with that have experienced this have been very forthright in the issues and have been very quick to retire the paddle as well because it's ultimately
00:11:36
Speaker
It's very difficult to win with something that you can't control. Sure, it may hit the ball out of the park, but if you can't keep it in the court, it doesn't matter. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you see that as far as just like the commentary on it. It's just like, yeah, it works on like a ground stroke from the baseline, but if you're trying to get up to the kitchen and you're playing the soft game, then
00:11:58
Speaker
You just have like no control. You're trying to dink. And it's just like going in places and places, directions, paces that you're just not expecting. Um, Brian, the, this rule has been there for quite some time. And so the, the understanding of delamination has been around for years. The difference is the, you know, the paddles have evolved as well. The old older format of paddles, um, was, uh, you know, a facial ply.
00:12:26
Speaker
a core, generally polymer core these days, and then another facial apply. When this would delaminate or the core would break down, the paddle would generally become mushy and it wouldn't feel like it could return energy the way it used to. There's a new configuration of paddle.
00:12:44
Speaker
It's loosely referred to as thermal formed. However, thermal forming has been around a long time, even with that other configuration. But the paddles that are exhibiting this delamination issue with the spike in power have a wraparound tube of carbon that's filled with foam. And that provides essentially a frame that suspends the facial plies. And so in the event of delamination, now there's a suspended
00:13:14
Speaker
facial ply and partially deteriorated core, which now you've got a rebound effect, which can return quite a bit more power. The manufacturers that have this configuration are all working to ensure that they're using the best possible bonding and adhesive compounds to make sure that it doesn't separate, but they're also looking at, you know, how do we
00:13:39
Speaker
accentuate the molding process to ensure that that facial plies is very well bonded from a pressure standpoint to the core as well. When you mentioned delamination and being able to detect it, I think
00:14:09
Speaker
When we talk about delamination, you see a lot of conversations that are geared towards the professionals. I think it definitely does not benefit the recreational player as well. And I think a recreational player, not I think recreational players do make up.
00:14:24
Speaker
a large majority of the pickleball community, sales, just the usage of paddles. How can someone without equipment or maybe not even that much knowledge of a difference between a delaminated paddle and not delaminated, how can they tell the difference between, oh, my paddle's now delaminated.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, there's a couple different ways of doing it. One is clearly there's a change in how fast the ball comes off the face of the paddle. There's generally a change in the tone. When the ball strikes the face of the paddle, it becomes a lower frequency clunk or thump. In some cases, actually, there's a higher frequency tick or slap as well. So off the shelf, the paddle will sound, will have a certain acoustic characteristic.
00:15:18
Speaker
If a player does notice a substantial change in that accompanied with increased power, and of course in these older configuration panels, the traditional sandwich panels that I referred to earlier, if it feels mushy right away, clearly paddle manufacturers will offer a return for a customer if they do experience something like that. So if I were a consumer,
00:15:46
Speaker
and I noticed a rapid change in the playability of my paddle. It might be hot for a couple of games which might feel great and someone might feel like it's become an even better weapon or tool for them. The fact is it will have a very fast deterioration curve and so really they need to just contact their paddle manufacturer or distributor and request a refund for it. There is a field test, by the way,
00:16:15
Speaker
where you can take a quarter and tap the face of the paddle, and if it has truly delaminated, it will have a very different sound to it in the middle of the paddle than it will further down toward the throat. And so a couple of taps in each area, if you hear a considerably different tone, then more than likely you're experiencing delamination. Interesting. Awesome. Yeah, I can't wait for
00:16:39
Speaker
people to know that and understand that because yeah, I think paddles for the most part have changed as far as pricing and no one of course wants to spend whatever amount of money it is on a paddle and it end up being defective. And it is good to know that what you said about it might feel good temporarily, but like long-term it just that doesn't withstand. And then like one thing I do really
00:17:09
Speaker
appreciate about manufacturers and the pickleball where it is now.
00:17:14
Speaker
I know a lot of people who've had paddle issues and manufacturers without question just take it and they refund or they replace the paddle instantly, which is great. Yeah, it's very interesting. Do you think USAP has a responsibility for handling disputes and conflicts that arise during competitions between teams or players in terms of gear?
00:17:40
Speaker
We feel our role is to help define the standards. We're essentially providing technical services for the pro entities, right? And so in terms of any policies, policy application or disputes, it will really be up to what the
00:18:02
Speaker
that league's governing body wants to implement. So is it a disqualification? Is it a penalty? Do you lose your points or prize money? It'll be different in every case. And so we're providing essentially guidance on testing, technical support in terms of actually conducting the testing and acquiring equipment and providing that service to the pro-tours.
00:18:28
Speaker
and these leagues and major events as well. And just to make sure that it's consistent.
00:18:34
Speaker
The application of that and what the policy might look like from league to league will be different for a number of reasons. Speaking of leagues and events and kind of USAP's partnership within that realm, aside from the three golden ticket events, how does PPA not being USA Pickleball sanctioned do you think affects the tournament?
Partnerships and Standards in Pickleball Competitions
00:19:00
Speaker
Well, I've had the opportunity to participate or support several of their events here this year, initially presenting the support and then more recently providing on-site support for testing as well. There's many reasons for sanctioning, but up until today, the PPA has
00:19:27
Speaker
It's the term I need to use here. They've been respectful of the guidelines put in place, the standards that we have years of experience in research and implementation and putting together. And so speaking from that angle, I've been very pleased about being able for USAP to be able to support these events and provide a consistent application of standards
00:19:57
Speaker
as well. And so what we're also trying to do is raise the bar. As I mentioned before, there were concerns, confidence issues with the SR160. So implementing a higher spec tool almost immediately as of last year and then rolling into this optical scanning platform, we believe is staying ahead of the curve from a technology standpoint, providing an advanced level of technical support and attention to detail around
00:20:25
Speaker
the specifications that each of the respective leagues and those entities want to maintain within their competitions. They want a fair competition, right? They want a level playing field for the athletes, which is very important. So we're supporting that. And then of course our responsibility in maintaining a level playing field for the manufacturers, both at the entry point, by that I mean,
00:20:53
Speaker
certification testing and licensing upfront, as well as ongoing while they're still bringing a product to market, the compliance testing, those are primary responsibilities for us. We're in a collaborative supporting role with the leagues and pro tours as we described. How quickly does the optical scanning produce the results necessary to know whether or not it's within regulation? Immediate. Oh, okay.
00:21:22
Speaker
It's a couple of seconds to scan. It's run on a high-spec computer, and the information is presented. I hope to share with you some images of what this looks like. What's very interesting here is you can manipulate the data in a three-dimensional space to do a deeper dive to understand the texture and terrain of a paddle face. The examples that I have that we've already gone through during our evaluation process
00:21:49
Speaker
have been very interesting. We used three different paddle types. One is the raw carbon paddle face. Another is a paddle manufacturer that used a patterned face to introduce texture, which was very interesting. And then the other was a traditional, although high friction, peel ply fiberglass face, a very popular model, which I'm sure everyone's familiar with. And what's revealed with these scans
00:22:19
Speaker
is very interesting in terms of the regularity of the peaks and valleys or the friction inducing pieces on a paddle face or features on a paddle face.
00:22:30
Speaker
So, as far as like manufacturers, they probably sent you like all the demo paddles and everything before they're being released and then you get to test them out and obviously run this using the tools for testing. But do you also kind of like hit with them and get a feel for those? In most cases, yes. So, we see every paddle that's submitted for certification. There's a team of three.
00:22:56
Speaker
that evaluate these paddles. It's not just me. So there's a team of three on the equipment evaluation committee that review the paddles, look for specific features on it. And of course, there are multiple paddles or samples sent into our labs, NTS, for the actual lab testing under very specific conditions. So there's a fairly significant group of qualified individuals that review the paddles up front.
00:23:25
Speaker
And then we're putting in place a compliance lab up here in the Northwest where not only will we have the library of all paddles tested and certified in the past, but this is where we will also be testing paddles for compliance in the future. So we're also doing a few very interesting things. We'll be starting acoustic testing of paddles when they're submitted to be able to give it essentially an acoustic profile.
00:23:55
Speaker
It isn't meant to label them as good or bad. It's just to gather the data and start to build a good database of paddles that exhibit certain acoustic characteristics, which is a big part of and very related to the growth of the sport. There's been some concerns over the sports acoustic profile. And so this is one of the initiatives that we'll be doing here in Q2, kicking off in Q2.
00:24:23
Speaker
which is understanding a specific paddles acoustic profile. Wow, super exciting. Every paddle sounds very different. I always thought the project paddles from Selkirk, they sounded very different. What paddle do you use now? To be frank, I'll hit with almost every paddle that comes in. I received two paddles, one for archive and then one for testing. Otherwise, the acoustic testing, destructive testing, we're starting to do a bit more of that.
00:24:53
Speaker
as well to understand a bit more of the components in a paddle. Yeah, I like many paddles. I like a soft paddle. I like a paddle that has a nice swing weight that's higher. I do have a three in one head swing weight machine, which I use to evaluate a paddle's balance, basically weight and balance. So it tests if it's head heavy, head light. It has a very accurate scale on it as well.
00:25:22
Speaker
But then the swing weight piece of it's a very sophisticated way of evaluating where the weight is located in the paddle as well. And so I like something that's a little, you know, where the weight's a little bit further out. And so there's many, many that fall into that sweet spot for me.
00:25:40
Speaker
Damn, I thought I was going to be able to get you to drop a name. I'm just messing with you. How was MLP Daytona? You know, just from your perspective of the testing, like there was a lot of data collection in order to start getting an idea of baseline protocols and policies for infield testing, but also, you know, like what was just your perspective as someone who's been in the sport for a while and seeing MLP as a new tournament format?
00:26:07
Speaker
Sure. It was my first in-person experience of an MLP event and it was fantastic, frankly. Just my personal experience there. From a testing standpoint,
00:26:22
Speaker
They've been evolving this apparently over the last couple of events. At this event they had an experienced team in place that would, the paddles would be logged on ingestion. They would be moved to a discrete testing area where they were run through a battery of tests and this data was collected as you mentioned.
00:26:45
Speaker
The chain of custody was very thorough in terms of no one touching the paddles outside of the testers and then they were put in a secure area for the players to come back and pick up later.
00:27:01
Speaker
And so I was very impressed with the process they had in place. I hope to continue to support them with various equipment platforms whether it's the ultrasonic tester or the optical scanning platform in the future because of its sophistication as well. But they're in a kind of a data acquisition mode right now.
00:27:22
Speaker
And so I'm anxious to see what the roll up looks like after this last event. What do you think is the best way to regulate what the standards are for testing? Like, do you think maybe it leans towards having a representative from each company and being able to have like, maybe there's like an open summit like every year and they talk about like the standards. From what I understand, like USA Pickleball does the compliance testing, but then
00:27:46
Speaker
There's also manufacturers who always want to like push the boundaries and kind of innovate, which from my understanding, you just think, well, it doesn't have like a hand in that per se, right? Absolutely. A national governing body shouldn't, frankly. So we provide a framework for paddle manufacturers.
00:28:06
Speaker
and ensure limits. Roughness, deflection, coefficient to friction, dimensioning and gloss are the main metrics that we're looking at to control or contain. That's all in the interest of preserving what we believe to be the nature of the sport. And it's a sport that has a fairly dynamic range of
00:28:30
Speaker
of aspects to it, everything from precision and touch to some power as well. And this is a position that the board takes to make sure that's being maintained. It's up to the equipment evaluation committee to ensure that the standards and testing procedures support that. Now, in terms of innovation, so this is a very good question, and I've seen quite a bit of it the last few years. There's a fine line between
00:29:00
Speaker
control and I will credit a very well-known manufacturer with this positioning and I've used it many times and that is we have to be careful about defining too narrow
00:29:12
Speaker
development aperture or all paddles will be the same and so there has to be a bit of room for development and innovation which we believe we've given and we're seeing that in different technologies now open throat paddles you know we started to see come out a year and a half two years ago and I'll address that in a minute from a rules standpoint rules interpretation standpoint but you know so we're seeing
00:29:38
Speaker
some real innovation in materials, manufacturing process. So I'm sure you've seen the number of fully laid up or fully formed edgeless paddles coming out here in the last year or so, which are, you know, they're very sleek. They've got a different look and feel to them. And I think from a fit and finish standpoint, they're a very good looking
00:30:06
Speaker
The open throat piece is a logical and natural evolution. It has been in every paddle and racket sport over the years. There have been questions in the past about this is a hole in the paddle face and it violates one of the rules. Well, the rule in its full text, which is in our equipment standards manual, is that
00:30:31
Speaker
Holes on the face of the paddle that induce friction are disallowed. So this would be like on the face of a paddle paddle, for example. Those are disallowed in our sport. But an open throat is a natural configuration of evolution that we've seen in every paddle sport. The only one that's disallowed in is badminton, where there must be a single shaft.
00:30:51
Speaker
But you've seen it in squash, racquetball, tennis, and in all the major sports. You've seen it in pedal, for example. Open throats are now the norm as well. So you would set a clarification on that. Hopefully that answered your question. We want to make sure that there's room for innovation. And frankly, there's a fine line between
00:31:14
Speaker
looking for loopholes versus exploring the white space between the rules. And the latter is what we like to see. Exploiting loopholes and testing technologies and things like that that will elicit a different response from us.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate your response and the thoroughness. Yeah, no, you're definitely right. There is a difference between innovation and
00:31:47
Speaker
just looking for loopholes. I think thermoforming is a piece of innovation. The open throat is another aspect of innovation. What have you noticed has been the side effect of an open throat shaft or paddle? Well, from a physics standpoint, it improves something called polar moments.
00:32:10
Speaker
It provides a more stable face for the paddle. The attach points are wide instead of just down the center axis. The open throat provides a more stable, it's also called twist weight or spin weight, where before I talked about swing
Innovation Within Regulations: Open Throat Paddles
00:32:27
Speaker
weight, right? So it's around a different axis. That to me is one of the most important pieces of it and benefits of it that I've seen.
00:32:36
Speaker
Damn, that's interesting. I never considered that. I just thought like it gave it more pace, like aerodynamics, I guess, but that's also why it worked for you. Yeah, that's true. There could be a neurodynamic benefit, maybe a couple of percentage points. Nothing that's really going to make a big difference on a single hit. However, reducing aerodynamic drag, not unlike better gas mileage, adds up at the end of an hour.
00:33:06
Speaker
And so the energy required to swing the paddle may be a little bit less than a paddle without an open throat. I've actually seen lab results of paddles with open throats or vents in it to allow a little bit less pressure, face pressure to build up on the paddle. Of course, you sacrifice a little bit of hitting area with an open throat. And of course, for a manufacturer that may be
00:33:36
Speaker
an acceptable trade-off. So then those paddles, not that they're necessarily like USA or like tournament approved, but the paddles with the holes on like the sides and more like on the paddle face rather than throat, that's less about stability then, right? There's actually maybe an unintended consequence of those vents on the sides that you're talking about because on the drill through, material has to be
00:34:03
Speaker
put into those pass-throughs to seal off the core. And it actually may introduce weight on the sides of the paddle, which also is a benefit in terms of improving the polar moment. So I think it's an unintended benefit. The reduction in aerodynamic drag could be several points as well. And the manufacturer that produces those paddles has done considerable research in this area.
00:34:33
Speaker
There's one other point I wanted to make. The fact that it's out within one half inch of the bumper guard or the edge of the paddle, it falls into a space that we're comfortable with and have been comfortable for years. The interpretation on that is that, you know, that's as part of the paddle that you can put a tape with your name on or right or, you know, we're not so concerned about anything that close to the edge of the paddle. You use a lot of terminal, like technical terminology, which may have,
00:35:01
Speaker
just built up over the years that you've been doing this. You've been on the equipment side for six years, but something that when researching your background, something that was very intriguing to me was your background at Intel. For anyone that doesn't know, Intel is a very well-known tech company. They've been producing microprocessors for a very long time. And I come from the tech space. You were there for 16 years.
00:35:31
Speaker
How has that played a role, if it has at all, in what you're doing now? Or how did that experience shape you as the person that you are today? Yeah, I'd like to address that by maybe a broader view. Having been in the workforce for four decades, I've had a chance to do many things in my life. And prior to my time in tech,
00:36:01
Speaker
I worked for, I was an exec with the Fortune 50 companies you've mentioned, also at the smaller public company in Europe. Prior to that, I was an entrepreneur. I started and ran a small business back in the late 80s, prior to moving into tech. This was, it was essentially an equivalent, it started the same year as NetJets. It was a fractional ownership, charter operation,
00:36:31
Speaker
that, unfortunately, where NetJets was funded by Warren Buffett, we were not. So that was an interesting experience from a small business and startup standpoint. Prior to that, I was a racquetball pro back in the Boone years. And following that period, I was a club GM and ran several facilities, which makes my function in the facilities development side
00:37:01
Speaker
And then before that, my work life started as a systems engineer with a focus in industrial engineering, working with the largest R&D entity in the US, and that's the Patel Memorial Institute. So really what I'm doing today is a convergence of all those things that I've done over the last 40 years. And that's what makes it so interesting to me. I'm able to apply what I've learned,
00:37:30
Speaker
learn from the scars, from failures or industry booms and busts.
Avoiding the Pitfalls of Past Racquet Sports
00:37:37
Speaker
And I'm really trying to take an approach to address those things that I didn't feel were addressed, for example, in racquetball. They're not recognized in racquetball in tennis. And that's part of this museum behind me. I was a sponsor player with Pro Kenix and Wilson and a few other companies in my racquetball days.
00:37:58
Speaker
What you can't see here is that from the top here, we went from a very small, probably 70 square inch wooden racket through a number of different iterations of composite rackets. This was my racket when I was competing and teaching. But here we've got a very large, 105 square inch.
00:38:19
Speaker
racket, right, a modern one. On this side I've got a bit of an evolution of tennis with some very notable rackets. Max Play Fort, the first fully composite racket was a vocal zebra. And then of course the game changer was the Prince, the first Prince which brought in a 105 plus square inch string bed to tennis. The unintended consequences of both of these
00:38:48
Speaker
these directions in these sports was they left the recreational athletes behind. And so in addition to this being a museum, it's also a cautionary tale. And I see this and it reminds me that our role every day is to make sure that nothing too crazy happens out there and we keep an eye on development. We provide as much support as we can to the ecosystem, but it's up to us as the governing body to ensure
00:39:17
Speaker
that this sport doesn't change so quickly that the unintended consequence of leaving the highest percentage of recreational players behind happens. So that's something that we think about every day and drives our policy making, our focus on the standards and ensuring that
00:39:37
Speaker
test protocols and testing technologies as advanced as they can be. That's awesome. I really appreciate that, Cher. And the sport is very lucky and fortunate to have someone who is constantly reminded of the past, especially when a sport is growing very, very quickly. And that is something that I've thought about a lot. You see a lot of talk about the digital emanation and
00:40:02
Speaker
Paddle defects and you know all these things coming up on the pro player side at the end of the day It's like the consumers that are most affected because a lot of these consumers There's not just tournament players but rec players and at some point Maybe they can't get the warranty and they also are left wondering like hey, I just dropped like a hundred fifty dollars on this paddle What is the deal with this like is it now?
00:40:26
Speaker
Is it just going to sit on my shelf and be left to accumulate dust or, you know, can I play with it? So, um, yeah, I can think I can speak on behalf of many people that sport is very fortunate to have you and especially the governing body. And thank you for the, the responsibility and accountability that you take and the seriousness and the thoroughness to, um, provide
00:40:52
Speaker
this aspect to the sport that at the end of the day affects everyone. So yeah, that's awesome. Your background is very interesting. It's reassuring to hear when you say convergence of many skills because in backgrounds, because I come from doing so many different things and you hear a lot about it in life is just people talk about
00:41:17
Speaker
you know, mastering that one skill set. Don't be a jack of all trades. You don't want to have too much knowledge and too many things. You don't want to spread yourself thin. And then eventually you have folks like you who can speak to convergence. Not that everything that you did was wildly different directions, but it is great to hear that. I appreciate that. There's a book out there. Um,
00:41:40
Speaker
the title is Range, and it is, I believe it was done by, I hope I don't misquote this, David Epstein. He's wrote very, very interesting books, and I'm a firm believer in that. In systems engineering, it's basically an assembly of many different disciplines, and likewise industrial engineering is as well, and I believe to be effective in a smaller organization, you do need to be able to do
00:42:09
Speaker
and bring several skill sets to bear. Cross-functionality and being able to operate across an organization is still important in small organizations, but I believe a diverse skill set is very helpful and something that I would certainly coach someone on trying to develop throughout their lifetime.
00:42:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You did a presentation at the American Sports Builders Association. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. Yeah. So the USA Pickleball has been able to present to, you know, a very large body of, of, uh, court builders, um, each year. Um, I had the opportunity to present to this group, uh, in December, uh, just a few months ago. And the theme of the story was, um,
00:43:02
Speaker
You know, there were a couple of different topics, but the overarching theme was, you know, why 2024 wouldn't be like 1984. And of course, my comparison was to racquetballs, boom and bust, and that we're paying attention to it. You know, we want to make sure that we're focused on the right aspects of the sport to continue grassroots growth.
00:43:25
Speaker
continue to support other programs that we believe will have a long-term impact on the game, as well as building up the infrastructure, which is another key focus for me in terms of supporting design and the right material selections for venues. The main thing there was paying attention to supporting these build-outs in a way that is sustainable.
00:43:53
Speaker
And so the growth in the 80s, both in the racquetball clubs but also many tennis clubs, it wasn't sustainable for a number of reasons. In tennis.
00:44:04
Speaker
There were some reasons that had to do with the share costs of a tennis barn, for example. In both cases, the private club type business model was very difficult to sustain. Member acquisition and member retention are incredibly expensive. And then, of course, when it comes down to infrastructure,
00:44:27
Speaker
than heating and cooling, a racquetball court, for example, is quite expensive. And so if you can't keep people in there, you know, with a high utilization rate, it's Darwinian. You have to make a decision at some point and reallocate those resources, which that was my theme, is that we need to learn from that era. And now when, you know,
00:44:53
Speaker
Very, very excited people come to us today for support for club design or facilities design and development. We walk through their business plan with them. We look at their facilities design along with the specifics of the consultation. We do talk about perhaps a more cautious or gated approach, which I would describe as crawl, walk, run.
00:45:23
Speaker
So do you go out and take a $5 million loan to build out your facility right away without really doing a deep dive on the market or testing your business model? And so in many cases, we look at a phased build out, which might start with a cluster of courts and then adding them on as they reach certain gates. And ideally, you might be able to bootstrap the operation or at least reduce the amount of debt load that you take on.
00:45:51
Speaker
That was a big part of the problem back in the 80s, specifically with racket clubs. And that was the amount of debt taken on that could never be offset with income. And so our advice is that don't bite off more than you can chew. Look at a phased model. And there's a number of different business models that we really are excited about with the advent of these roll out surfaces that have an acrylic and silicate finish.
00:46:20
Speaker
It enables owner operators, developers to inhabit previously unused commercial or industrial spaces or hangers, for example, and roll out let's say six or eight courts to begin with. And once they reach a certain membership level, then they expand. And the upside of this is that they could actually roll up the courts, disassembled pro grade nets on Friday and open up in a new larger facility on Monday.
00:46:51
Speaker
because these capital investments can be taken with you rather than left behind in a conventional case. I can't wait to highlight this, what you just said in the past like five minutes into a clip. This is amazing because I think like one, the aspect of the point that you're making about the crawl walk run and not biting off more than you could chew is
00:47:17
Speaker
very important right now because the thing that is probably second to paddle creation, at least from my perspective, is building out courts. You're just seeing it and I have like, I spoke to a guest, I've spoken to two people so far, or actually three, who've all been building out courts and one of them just built out the largest indoor pickleball facility in Texas, which is located in Houston, it's called Pala.
00:47:45
Speaker
I love that USA Pickleball is providing a resource as well. Is this resource, is it free? What's the cost? This first year we've been providing it for each charge. Our main goal is to help support the identification and rapid development of facilities. We'll be moving into more of a services model.
00:48:11
Speaker
We have a pretty good partnership with an external group that helps with feasibility studies, owner representation, a company called Ground Rule. They've been a very good partner for us in the past, and we look to expand how we're working with them today. What we'll be doing, we'll layer in some services that'll include data to support feasibility studies, economic impact, and we've been doing this already this last year.
00:48:41
Speaker
to the tune of probably 15 to 20 new engagements a week. It's been very busy. And so we're bringing in additional resource to try to keep up with that. But I think back to reflect on your observation, to borrow Alan Greenspan's comment of years ago of irrational exuberance. For people that are coming into this are super excited, we just want to
00:49:06
Speaker
make sure that they're looking at the big picture and take very well-considered steps as they make investments and possibly take on debt during the process of a facilities build-out.
Sustainable Growth of Pickleball Facilities
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah, because this country does not need to take on more debt.
00:49:26
Speaker
It's a separate conversation. It's great that they're excited about it. I just want to make sure that it's done in a step-by-step manner. And one last quote I'll give you was from a colleague back in the days of the aircraft charter that I mentioned before. And his comment was, there's no magic in aluminum.
00:49:50
Speaker
And so people that got into the aviation business just because of the love of flight, that doesn't run a good operation, right? So his point was it's still a business at the end of the day that has to thrive and rightly survive. And so that was a comment I've kept and remembered for 30 plus years.
00:50:13
Speaker
USA Pickleball is doing what you just mentioned, offering that resource as far as facilities development. They're getting courts built. There's grant money. Is there anything else there that you want to touch upon as far as what's going on with USA Pickleball? It's great to have this resource that's looking out for the growth of the sport. Just to clarify, we're not offering grants for facilities.
00:50:40
Speaker
We're not in the same space as USTA. Know also though that those grants, you know, that an entity like the USTA might offer do come with strings. And so at this point, we're not resourced to do that kind of thing. But I think the value add that we bring is a deep experience in programming operations designed
00:51:08
Speaker
subtleties all the way down to color selection. Things like that are very important. Ultimately, a pickleball facility is a place for sports and athletic competition and paying attention to things that are important to an athlete like optics.
00:51:29
Speaker
You don't have light backgrounds in an indoor facility. The choice of red, for example, as a border, you know, an OB or a court color doesn't take into the fact that red very much stimulates the rods and cones of your eye and can be after images. So it's fatiguing if you're playing on a surface with red. And so what I've seen
00:51:57
Speaker
Mostly in place already, but my advice is cool, darker colors. For court selection and color identification or color choices for an athletic facility, specifically the flooring and background, are no place for personal expression. For picking a favorite color or something like that, it's an athletic endeavor.
00:52:28
Speaker
acuity, optical clarity, keeping clutter down, so changes in the background, keeping things as uncluttered as possible. It's all subtleties that really improve the player experience or the member experience as well. In many cases, a member won't know that's the problem. They'll just feel like I didn't play very well when in fact it's because the optics weren't great within a facility.
00:52:58
Speaker
And we've seen this many times in the past. So we give that kind of advice. Almost every facility that comes to us, Brian, wants to be part of a tournament pipeline. And so we're giving him advice on ensuring that there's space for operations, space for the referees to be able to meet, be briefed in the morning, and then rest between matches and keep their equipment, space and hardscape for vendors.
00:53:28
Speaker
And of course, let's say we use a formula or an algorithm to determine what the capacity might be for a tournament. And of course, I think it's about 4x what the face value is for the number of people on the court. So you've got a 20 court facility. Of course, the math says 80 people can be out there playing.
00:53:52
Speaker
Well, there can be actually 220 to 240 players at the event that day. So you have to plan for that capacity and movement of traffic and things like that. So we're giving them that kind of advice on the design side as well.
00:54:10
Speaker
We're not laying it out ourselves. We've got architects and designers that we pull in that are content experts. I was not aware of this, and I'm not even sure if many other people are. Based on what I've seen at some courts, I don't think that people are aware that this resource exists because, yeah, just like you said. We've only been around a year and a quarter.
00:54:31
Speaker
with this focus. And of course, most of the facilities you play on have been finished in the past. Many of these projects, for example, I met with a 41-court project in Fort Lauderdale last week. It's a beautiful layout and plan. They've got a significant strategy in terms of addressing the entertainment crowd, the competition crowd, and the community itself.
00:55:00
Speaker
And they're looking to align very closely with USA Pickleball and programming and design and even R&D down the line. So we're very excited about that. But that won't be fully operational till 2024. And so the pipeline for these type of facilities is much longer. We are working with the ASBA, by the way, in updating this manual. So this is the 2020, the most recent manual, court builder's manual,
00:55:29
Speaker
And we're working very closely with them to update it to include some of these things that I've been mentioning, like color selections, tournament amenities for large scale events.
Sound Management in Pickleball Courts
00:55:41
Speaker
There will also be a section on acoustics, which we're investing a significant amount of energy and R&D. And you can see these two microphones in back of me. The old school method of evaluating an acoustic footprint
00:55:56
Speaker
of a venue is to use a single omnidirectional mic. What we're finding is that our sport is getting essentially broad brushed with a lot of the other ambient sounds in an area. Aircraft flyover, reflections off of adjacent buildings, traffic. And so what you see behind you are ambisonic mics with multiple microphone capsules on them, which can provide something called auditory localization.
00:56:26
Speaker
and it will more accurately attribute the court's contribution to the soundscape or traffic or aircraft flyovers. And so we're trying to advance the ball in terms of understanding how you measure the acoustic imprint and footprint of our sport and whether the courts exist already or it's a design project and we gotta go in and measure the soundscape of an existing area. And there's several projects where we're working with them on that.
00:56:55
Speaker
Damn, that's beautiful. I wish we had like three hours to talk. I'm not going to lie. Those things in the back are those omnidirectional microphones. I thought that was like Star Wars memorabilia. It looks a little like Death Star. Yeah, this is a 19-capsule ambisonic mic.
00:57:14
Speaker
And it's fairly high value. This is a four-capsule Andisonic mic, which we may actually put together in kits and send out to ambassadors to collaborate with acoustical engineers, with certified engineers, but to take a much more granular approach to evaluating the acoustic soundscape of the site.
00:57:36
Speaker
That's amazing. I cannot wait for that. I cannot wait to share this. I just have one last question. What advice would you give to someone who's interested in pursuing a career in sports regulation and governance? That's a great question. If I look at myself, I had a specific experience in a number of different industries that could be applied toward the sport.
00:58:06
Speaker
Outside of what I do for USA Pickleball, I built a media platform years ago because there was an absence of a low-cost live streaming, live broadcast platform. So I handled all the pro tournaments back in 2019 before the two pro tours kicked off. But it's, I think, understanding what your strengths are.
00:58:28
Speaker
looking for an opportunity to bring that contribution to the sport, understanding what the gaps might be, because we're not all there yet. We're still in our early stages of development. We're understanding more and more about the physics of the sport, and so we're trying to apply things like this optical scanning and other technologies to better understand it.
00:58:52
Speaker
Analytics is huge, the potential, and right now it's largely absent, certainly from broadcast and even after the fact. Right now it's heavy lifting to analyze matches. There's quite a few opportunities, I think, to bring specific expertise to, but saying that, even volunteering, as an ambassador,
00:59:21
Speaker
That is huge. I would say that our ambassadors are our most valuable asset. There's close to 2,000 out there that are promoting the sport and supporting site identification and build outs or conversions, leading leagues, and really helping grow the sport at the grassroots level. So even without a specific background in
00:59:48
Speaker
in something that might plug in to the staff, there's plenty to do out in the community as well.
The Role of Ambassadors in Pickleball Growth
00:59:57
Speaker
So I'd say that if you love the sport and you have some cycles available to help contribute, check in with your local district ambassador or local ambassador and ask where you can help. It might start off as volunteering for an event, but that's a great place to start.
01:00:17
Speaker
Appreciate that input and insight. That's where I started. I was a local ambassador here in my hometown. There you go, proof is in the pudding. Seeing it in the flesh now. Well, I don't want to take up too much more of your time. I know you're a busy guy. Where can people find out more information about you, what you're doing, any other resources that you think are valuable?
01:00:39
Speaker
Of course, our website is a great resource, usapickleball.org. There are specifics for the facility side as well as for the equipment side, and those are available through drop-down menus. If you want to drop a note on the equipment side, it's just equipment at usapickleball.org. On the facility side, same format of facilities at usapickleball.org.
01:01:09
Speaker
And of course, my, my email is, uh, C Schmitz at USA pickleball.org. And so I'm happy to respond to direct questions. Um, or you can go through those, uh, those other channels as well. Awesome. This was a lot different than I was expecting. There's so much more stuff that I took away from this, even personally, really appreciate your time and sharing your insights from the technical aspect, from just aspects of life. It really made this enjoyable. I really appreciate your time.
01:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, thank you, Brian. Thanks for the opportunity to go over these, and maybe we can follow up once we've launched some of these new programs as well. That would be awesome. Yeah. Very good. Thanks, Carl. All right, thank you.