Sunday, July 12, 2009
Meet tennis’s estranged cousin, pickleball. Dick Walker, Topeka ambassador for the USA Pickleball Association, led a demonstration of this little-known sport to curious local residents Saturday morning at the Holcom Park tennis courts.
Seeing resurgence in the past few years since its creation in the 60s, the sport combines different parts of tennis, pingpong and badminton.
Amanda Turner, right, Overland Park senior, volleys while Jo Ellis, Recreation Programs Supervisor prepares for a counter-serve during a demonstration of the game Pickleball at Holcom Sports Complex Friday morning. Dick Walker, Kansas ambassador for the USA Pickleball Association, conducted the demonstration of the game, which involves a whiffleball and paddles with similar rules to tennis.
In pickleball, two players or two teams of two hit a small whiffle ball with a wooden or synthetic paddle back and forth on a playing field similar to a small-scaled tennis court. Players serve the whiffle ball underhanded over the net diagonally to the receiving players. A point is only scored by the player or team that serves, and the first player to earn 11 points wins the game.
While living in Arizona, Walker said, he had heard “clack, clack” noises at the tennis courts he frequented. He said that when he asked some of his fellow tennis players where the sound was coming from, they told him “It’s that goddamn pickleball.”
After a shoulder injury left him unable to serve overhand in tennis, Walker said, he picked up pickleball because it combined the tennis-style volleys within a smaller space.
“For some reason, with this game, people tend to laugh and have more fun with this sport,” Walker said.
Amanda Turner, Overland Park senior, helped set up Saturday’s demonstration as part of her internship with the Lawrence parks and recreation department. Turner said part of her goal was to increase awareness of pickleball before classes for the sport debuted this fall and spring for the community.
Turner said even though she had only been playing with the Lawrence pickleball group for the past couple weeks, she had already become addicted.
“By this week, the more I played, the more I like it,” Turner said. “I can’t stop.”
Evan Jorn, Lawrence ambassador for the USA Pickleball Association, has helped to reorganize and promote the local pickleball group since joining two years ago. Last May, the parks and recreation department added yellow painted outlines to create official pickleball courts at the Holcom Park tennis courts.
Mary Chappell, director of recreation services at the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center, said pickleball had been a part of the University for a while. She said the recreation center already offered all the equipment necessary for students to play and had also offered it as a special event.
Chappell said she used to teach pickleball in a recreation and leadership class at Robinson Gymnasium when she first came to the University in 1982. Chappell said pickleball was “one of those trends” that started out gaining popularity and then went away for a while until it’s rediscovery as being something new to try.
For more information about pickleball and the local pickleball group, visit usapa.org and click “Places to Play.”
— — Edited by Annie Vangsnes
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