Calling single men in Cayman — a new dating experience needs you. IslandSoul, which organises events promoting health, creativity and wellness such as silent beach discos, sound baths, meditation, yoga and dance, is adding matchmaking to its schedule, but is finding it hard to get men to commit.
Its brand-new event, Pickle & Pair, aims to connect singles over a game or two of pickleball, but organiser and IslandSoul founder Kieri Dornan says that while women are keen to sign up, encouraging men to take the plunge is proving to be a little harder.
“There is an interest, but we are struggling to get guys to sign up,” Dornan says.
“It’s like they’re scared to try. I’ve got lots of ideas in this space, but we thought that starting with pickleball would be a great way to appeal to both men and women. But at the moment there are more women than men who have actually bought tickets and it won’t work if we don’t have equal numbers of each on the day.”
To give reluctant daters more time to sign up, the event has been pushed back from 31 May to 8 June, starting at the Roost at 6:30pm. On the evening itself, attendees start off by filling out a questionnaire, which should identify their optimal match, based on US matchmaking software Matchbox, which claims to have matched 750,000 singles worldwide to date.
The pickleball games will then commence, giving people a chance to connect on and off the court. The idea is that the groups are mixed throughout the evening, and at some point attendees are told that their connection is in their current group, which adds an element of intrigue and suspense to the event. At the end of the evening, the actual match will be revealed, and then it’s up to the singles what to do next.
Game, set and matchmaking
“It might be that you’ve already bonded with your match, or it was someone that you’re yet to talk to,” Dornan says. “Men are telling us that it’s a great idea and are really supportive of the event … but I don’t know what we can do to convince them to actually sign up.”
Dornan founded IslandSoul 18 months ago after quitting her busy job in the corporate world.
“I was a global head of transformation, which meant I went into companies to restructure their systems, people and processes,” she tells the Compass.
“I was constantly travelling. I was on the British Airways flight every three weeks and travelled around the UK once I was there. It was non-stop. I ended up being burnt out and broken, and that’s when IslandSoul was born.”
Dornan quit her job, quit alcohol and, newly single, started her own healing journey, as she puts it, “while hopefully helping others heal too”.
This led to the creation of IslandSoul, which, she says “is about connecting people in a different, more healthy way, rather than everything revolving around alcohol”.
After running a series of successful events, including the first IslandSoul Festival earlier this year, it seemed like a natural progression to move into matchmaking.
“There’s a massive need for it,” Dornan says. “Lots of single people I talk to say that they’re finding it hard to create real connections here.”
If not enough single men can be persuaded to sign up, then the pickleball event risks being pulled altogether.
“This is just one of many things that we’ve got planned,” Dornan says. “I’m just not sure what else we can do to get single men to sign up. I hope that they do though, as we’ve already got lots of single women who’d love to meet them!”
