What do you look for in a club night

Repolho

Hi,

Every year my local badminton club suffers a serious decline in playing numbers after Christmas. I'm trying to think of ways to improve our club nights in order to encourage people to come back to us.

What do you look for in a club night (be it tennis, badminton or any other sport). What does your club do that you think is good and what would you like to change?

Thanks.

Repolho

anyone....? maybe if I get the ball rolling.

One thing I would like from a club night is that games are picked in someway that offers balanced games. In our club we have players ranging from complete novice to Division 1 players. Nothing is more infuriating than when someone picks 3 novices and a Div 1/2 player or vice versa (3 Div 1/2 and 1 novice). I;d like to see players divided into 3 groups (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced) and games must consist of 4 from 1 group or 2+2.

chat247

We have a similar problem, to try and find a happy medium is to say the least frustrating. We want to encourage the newer less experienced players who naturally want to play with better players to help them improve however some of the better players feel its beneath them to play with anyone more than a grade below them. They seem to forget that they wouldn't be half the players they are if they weren't encouraged and coached by their peers when they started out.
While the better players will gain nothing playing with novices, its not in the clubs interest to prevent the better players getting a good workout but everyone has to remember that its a club for the benefit & enjoyment of all. If its not fun then its lost its core purpose, the secondary purpose of a small badminton club is the competitive side of the club.
I think we need to encourage a random mix for the first hour and then split the players into 2/3 groups by grade. We have tried something like this before but the better players waited until later in the evening before coming in. You'd feel like telling them to f**k off but where does that get the club in the long run?
Sorry for rambling but this is probably the biggest most divisive issue in small clubs with limited number and resources, I'd love if anyone out there has a solution!!

tipper1

We too have the very same problem.
I would love to offer some kind of weekly/monthly club comp but we have most of our players playing some kind of competitive badminton in whatever league or grade they are in.
One thing that may work would be the setting up of an in-club singles/doubles/mixed ladder or round-robin system. In this way whichever players are present on any particular night could arrange to play a club match between themselves.
One problem we have with this is that players on the same league teams,etc would normally like to train together.

It is definitely one of the trickiest things for clubs to sort out, especially if they only have 1 or 2 nights play per week.
I think we all want to encourage all players and keep them 'happy'.