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Pickleball

Alkali Ike

Alkali Ike

Gold Supporting Member
Jan 1, 2011
2,847
15,635
Pacific Northwest
www.xdrguy.com
Disclosures
I never actually learned to play very well
#1
Last week someone casually mentioned they’re into something called pickleball. I’ve never heard of it.

Pickleball - Wikipedia

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Then today NPR did a story on the growing popularity of pickleball and related controversy.

The pickleball pickle: America's fastest-growing sport divides communities

Apparently tennis players aren’t happy about pickleball players using “their” tennis courts for this. Also complaints about pickleball being “too noisy”.

Anyone have a pickleball story?
 
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#5
When I was in high school, when football was not going on I had a regular PE class. A few of us made up a game kinda like handball played on a tennis court backed up to the side of our school. The building was our board and the center line of the tennis court divided the territory for two teams of three. The goal was like volleyball, try to force your opponent to not get the ball back to your area. The ball had to hit the wall and once in the opposite block before it could be returned. That was pretty much it. With no limit on how many times a team could hit the ball into the wall and bounced back to their area, it was still in play. If you bounced it off your opponents space and they failed to hit it before a second bounce, you scored, if you hit it and it landed outside their area, they scored. Everything else was fluid and changed as the mood struck.
We called it Wombato.
 
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#6
My parents -- who are both in their 80s -- got into pickleball ~2 years ago when the COVID pandemic prevented them from doing their usual activities (4-wall indoor handball for Dad, tap dancing for Mom). As soon as COVID restrictions allowed for group activities to resume [sic] my Dad went back to handball and hasn't given pickleball a second look...but Mom has become this crazed obsessed pickleball fanatic! She plays three or four days a week, and it's apparently a huge activity at their local rec center, with intense competition for space on the half dozen or so courts there.

I tried playing it a couple times. Cot day-um my knees do not want to move in that direction!
 
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#8
I live an island-hop away from Victoria BC, Canada. Apparently in Victoria there's controversy over the noise made when the paddle strikes the ball. Pickleball has been banned on some courts. Seems kind of trivial compared to the general ambient sounds of a city. People there also complain about the noise from kids playing street hockey in the cul-de-sac, which I believe is also banned by some neighborhood associations.
The world I grow'd up in is long gone....
 
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#12
feterpatch said:
I live an island-hop away from Victoria BC, Canada. Apparently in Victoria there's controversy over the noise made when the paddle strikes the ball. Pickleball has been banned on some courts. Seems kind of trivial compared to the general ambient sounds of a city. People there also complain about the noise from kids playing street hockey in the cul-de-sac, which I believe is also banned by some neighborhood associations.
The world I grow'd up in is long gone....
Click to expand...


Our local rec center has a basketball court where we used to play floor hockey every thursday night.

They suddenly banned floor hockey after some boneheads broke a ceiling light playing indoor soccer.

We explained to them how it was literally impossible for a tiny plastic puck to even reach the ceiling, much less break a light, but they refused to listen to reason.
 
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#13
Funny, I just heard about this game recently myself. I was out in Kansas City the first week of June (I have an annual gig scoring AP Euro test essays for the College Board), and one of my friends brought her fiance along from Kentucky. What I asked what he was doing all day by himself while we were scoring essays, she said he was big into Pickleball and the Kansas City area was a major center for it, with tournaments you could jump into and stuff, and that's what he was doing. I had never heard of it before then.
 
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#16
Tennis players complain? There's no way you can share the courts? There is a set of 4 tennis courts near where I work and I can count one hand the number of times I actually see anyone playing.

Anything that people can take part in that has some activity and doesn't need thousands of dollars in gear to participate is a good thing. IMO.

Now, nude pickleball is something I'll leave to the pros. :D
 
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#18
BunchyMutt said:
Weird. If I remember correctly, pickleball was a PE ‘unit’ for me back in 2004 or thereabouts
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You got a whole year? Lucky. I had a net sports thing sophomore year of HS ('99ish) so a quarter of pickleball was required. Nowadays I know my mom plays, which is keeping with the theme of retired suburban picklball enthusiasts. I remember it being really fun. Not sure I have the lateral movement nowadays. "I tore my groin chasing a wiffle ball with a wooden paddle" is not a conversation I want to have with my doctor.
 
#19
TOOL460002 said:
You got a whole year? Lucky. I had a net sports thing sophomore year of HS ('99ish) so a quarter of pickleball was required. Nowadays I know my mom plays, which is keeping with the theme of retired suburban picklball enthusiasts. I remember it being really fun. Not sure I have the lateral movement nowadays. "I tore my groin chasing a wiffle ball with a wooden paddle" is not a conversation I want to have with my doctor.
Click to expand...
definitely not a whole year. Probably a month tops
 

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