251 players, one cause: Langford's Forget-Me-Not dementia tournament sells out

Two hundred fifty-one players signed up for a charity pickleball tournament in Langford, British Columbia, before registration had to close. The Forget-Me-Not tournament ran Friday through Sunday, October 16 to 18, at the Victoria Pickleball Centre, raising money for the BC Dementia Care Society, and the sold-out bracket sheet is the latest proof that charity pickleball has become one of the sport's most reliable engines.

The weekend format

The three-day structure split the field by division and day. Friday was for men's and women's doubles in the 50-plus divisions. Saturday brought more men's and women's doubles plus a co-ed division for true beginners, an on-ramp for players who had never entered a tournament. Sunday was reserved for mixed doubles, traditionally the loudest and most social bracket of any community event. Registration closed once the 251-player field filled, though the organizers pointed supporters toward other ways to back the cause.

The beginner division deserves a highlight of its own. Charity events are where enormous numbers of players get their first taste of bracket play, and a dedicated true-beginner draw removes the intimidation that keeps newer players out of tournaments entirely. Some of those first-timers will be in rated events within a year, and a few will be running their own brackets for the next cause that needs them. That pipeline, from charity beginner draw to committed tournament player, is how communities like Langford keep deepening.

The venue and the field

The Victoria Pickleball Centre has become the hub for organized pickleball on southern Vancouver Island, and hosting a 251-player charity weekend requires exactly what a dedicated facility provides: multiple courts running in parallel, scheduling software, and staff who can keep a three-day bracket moving. Public park courts could not absorb a field this size, which is why the region's dedicated centres keep landing the big community events.

The 50-plus Friday divisions are worth noting too. Senior-age brackets are the backbone of charity tournament fields, and scheduling them first, on the weekday, lets the working-age divisions take the weekend. It is a small scheduling choice that maximizes both attendance and atmosphere.

Where the money goes

The BC Dementia Care Society supports people living with dementia and the people caring for them, with programs including Memory Cafes and WeCARE Connection caregiver groups. The society says an earlier edition of the tournament raised $21,131.04, a precise figure that says a lot about how carefully the event tracks its impact. This year's total was not yet available at publication.

Dementia care is a natural fit for a pickleball fundraiser. The sport's demographic core overlaps heavily with the families most affected by dementia, players in their 50s, 60s and 70s who are spouses, adult children and caregivers themselves. A cause that personal fills brackets.

Why dementia care resonates in this sport

The society's programs, Memory Cafes that give people living with dementia and their families a social space, and WeCARE Connection groups that support caregivers, address the isolation that follows a diagnosis for entire families. Pickleball's community has visible skin in this fight: the sport is played by exactly the age group that watches friends and spouses face cognitive decline, and it is also one of the activities doctors increasingly recommend for healthy aging. A tournament that funds dementia care while demonstrating active aging on every court makes its case without needing a speech.

Charity pickleball's big month

The Langford event is part of a pattern we have tracked all month: fire-recovery tournaments in California, pink-themed opens in the Gulf, chamber of commerce events in Pennsylvania. What separates the Forget-Me-Not is scale. Two hundred fifty-one players at a single-venue charity weekend is a professional-grade field, the kind of number regional tours would happily publish.

The structural reason charity events keep growing is that they solve three problems at once. The cause gets money and visibility. The venue gets a full weekend of traffic. And the players get competition with emotional stakes, which is consistently the format that draws the biggest recreational fields. Nobody grinds a three-day bracket for a $5 medal, but they will absolutely do it for a cause their family has lived.

What to watch

The published fundraising total from this edition will be the number to compare against the $21,131 benchmark. If Langford's field keeps growing at this rate, the Victoria Pickleball Centre will need more courts or more days by 2027, and the BC Dementia Care Society will have one of the most productive fundraising weekends in Canadian pickleball. That is a good problem for a charity to have, and for a sport that keeps insisting its community is its strength, the Forget-Me-Not is what that claim looks like when it is measured in bracket sheets and bank deposits rather than slogans. The courts at Victoria Pickleball Centre earned their busy weekend.

Sources

• The Westshore - 251 players sign up for Langford's dementia-care pickleball tournament

Sources checked 20 Oct 2026. Header image is illustrative, not a photo of the events described.