Player Eligibility Factors: Skill, Gender, and Age
Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2025 9:49 pm
The main player eligibility factors established for the East Bay Team Pickleball League are skill level, gender, and age.
None of these factors is as cut and dried as it may seem initially. There are different rating systems for skill level. With gender, there are those who equate gender with biological sex assigned at birth and those that understand gender as a social contruct and an identity that can be chosen and changed. Age is perhaps the least controversial in definitional terms, but the practice of defining divisions by age ranges is not without controversy.
For the East Bay Team Pickleball League, the non-negotiable distinctions are (1) use of DUPR as the skill level rating system, and (2) the policy of this league is to let players participate in the gender category with which they identify.
One potentially controversial aspect of age as an eligibility factor is setting an "as of" date for determining age-related eligibility for any age-related division. The current policy of defining age as of December 31 of the league season year follows the policy of the USA Pickleball Association and is the most commonly used definition by other pickleball organizations.
If you have opinions you want to share about any of these eligibility criteria, or about other eligibility factors that you think should be considered, use this forum to do so.
None of these factors is as cut and dried as it may seem initially. There are different rating systems for skill level. With gender, there are those who equate gender with biological sex assigned at birth and those that understand gender as a social contruct and an identity that can be chosen and changed. Age is perhaps the least controversial in definitional terms, but the practice of defining divisions by age ranges is not without controversy.
For the East Bay Team Pickleball League, the non-negotiable distinctions are (1) use of DUPR as the skill level rating system, and (2) the policy of this league is to let players participate in the gender category with which they identify.
One potentially controversial aspect of age as an eligibility factor is setting an "as of" date for determining age-related eligibility for any age-related division. The current policy of defining age as of December 31 of the league season year follows the policy of the USA Pickleball Association and is the most commonly used definition by other pickleball organizations.
If you have opinions you want to share about any of these eligibility criteria, or about other eligibility factors that you think should be considered, use this forum to do so.