VOLLEYING
WEB SITE VISITOR RESPONSES

Re: "MY SERVE: AD IN (+) DEUCE (=) AD OUT (-)"
(October 2005 Issue)

The following is an e-mail that I received from Taylor Bowen, President of APTA Region VII, in response to my comment in the referenced article in which I rated the creation of APTA Region VII a “Deuce”.

Dear Chuck:

Regarding your “Deuce” verdict on the northern border of the new APTA Region VII, I would like to tell you why I proposed (and the APTA Board unanimously approved) to draw the borders the way we did between Regions III & VII.

To include the DC metro area in Region VII would have been no different for the southern paddle community (VA, NC, GA) than being in Region III. The DC paddle community is simply not “oriented” towards Virginia or points south. DC players are not an integral part of the southern paddle community; we are not part of theirs. No DC guys have ever played in the Southern Invitational in Winston-Salem, NC; they have no connection to the exploding Atlanta paddle scene. DC paddle players do not intermingle with Charlottesville or Richmond players at regular inter-club league matches. We are separate and distinct, both geographically and culturally (paddle-wise). We are not connected as sporting communities.

While the DC area has some fine players that would have added to the southern region’s caliber of play, it did not make sense to split DC off from its natural paddle community - Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia. That is their paddle neighborhood. Why tear it apart?

I suspect that many of the DC players that wanted to be in the new Region had an ulterior motive: they basically would have had their own President’s Cup Team. I do not blame them for wanting that, but we did not set out to create a new Region for the benefit of 10 players at a 1-day tournament.

My motivation for creating Region VII was to accelerate the growth of paddle in the “deep” South and, importantly, at all levels of play. The South has always been on the “paddle periphery” and outside the mainstream even of our old Region III. So the idea was to kick us out of the nest and let us learn to fly on our own. We are ready. To achieve our mission of growing the sport in the South the focus of the new Region needs to be on the South, not the Mid-Atlantic.

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