The Yukon PickleBall Association (YPA) hosted a pickleball instructor’s course and player clinics on the weekend at the small gym at Vanier Catholic Secondary School in Whitehorse.

Mark Renneson is a professional pickleball coach. In 2021, he was named the Head of Pickleball Coaching Education for Tennis Canada.

He delivered an NCCP Level 1 Pickleball Instructor course on Saturday and a full day of player clinics on Sunday.

The Star caught up with Renneson on Sunday during an advanced player’s clinic.

“Today we are (doing) a full day of pickleball clinics for different skill levels. This clinic right now is our advanced skill session, and we’ve got players from all over the Yukon, and some people even came from Alaska,” related Renneson.

“It’s a two and a half hour training session to give these pickelball players a chance to practice and to learn and to compete.

“This is day two. Yesterday was an instructor’s certification course put on by PickleBall Canada and this right now is a day of training put on by me and our company, Third Shot Sports,” he added.

When asked if that was the last clinic of the day, Renneson replied “we’ve got one more coming up. Today’s a 10-hour day. These are advanced players. We’ve run two intermediate sessions and then we gave those intermediate players a bit of a break and then some of them are coming back at 5 o’clock for an open play session, where they get some coaching as well.”

Renneson said the weekend had been going great to that point.

“I’m happy to be out here. The people here have been incredibly friendly and welcoming. I’m not sure that they get a whole lot of professional pickleball coaching here in the Yukon, so I was really happy that we could bring a pickleball instructor program here as part of the national certification program and to piggyback onto that a day of coaching with players has been really good for me and hopefully for the players here as well.”

Colleen Clark, one of the participants in the advanced clinic, echoed Renneson’s thoughts.

“We have a person in from out of town and he’s very skilled in teaching. We don’t have the opportunity to have high-quality instruction all the time, so this practice and ... activity is to really learn some strategy that we don’t always have the opportunity to see and learn how to do. So far, we’ve practiced some things that we actually know how to do, but he’s teaching us little tidbits, things he can see that we’re doing slightly wrong, which is making a pretty big improvement to some people’s games.”

Clark was asked what she thought of it so far.

“It’s been great. We’re changing around in partners. We get to play with different people. Most of the people, a lot of us know, because we play at Canada Games Centre, at Mount Mac (McIntyre) in the summertime, but there are a few new people too, and that’s advantageous, because you might make a connection, and be able to meet with that person at a later date, and play with them.”

Renneson identified the main goals of the clinic.

“Each of the sessions has a slightly different theme, so I guess the specific goals would be related to those different aspects of the game. But, overall, I’m going to count yesterday as a success, having done the instructors certification program. We have nine people who went through the program who listened and learned and improved their coaching.

“And I’m going to count today’s courses as a success if people come away saying ‘I played a ton of pickelball, I learnt a lot, and I had a great time.’”

Renneson also explained what Saturday’s instructor’s course was all about.

“This is the Level One Certification Program, which is really focused on introducing pickleball to new players ... it’s a pretty lengthy evaluation process. They’ve gone through it. They haven’t received their results yet ... a week from now, they will all have their results, but it was a strong showing from all nine of them.”

Renneson added,” It’s been great to be here. The pickleball community, in Whitehorse in particular, is very lucky to have so many enthusiastic players and now certified instructors. For a small community, they have a disproportionate amount of strong pickleball activity here.”