My First Time Playing Pickleball Series - Part 2
With the sport of pickleball exploding across almost all age ranges, we thought it would be interesting to talk to different beginners just getting into the sport about their experiences. Told through their voices, this is the first in our new series that highlights the journeys of players getting into pickleball and hopefully provide tips for other new comers.
Author bio:
Florida State University graduate, Anne, now holds a Bachelor of Science degree with a focus in advertising and a minor in innovation! She hopes to lean into strategy and copywriting during her internship.
Until this past year, I don’t think I had ever heard of pickleball, now it has come up more times this month than it ever has in my entire life.
Like most people, pickleball was introduced to me by friends. A good friend of mine invited some girlfriends to play pickleball for the afternoon.
The closest I had ever come to pickleball until this point was tennis lessons when I was nine. I didn’t have a paddle, I had no idea the rules of the court, how to score, or what the “kitchen” referred to.
The afternoon rolled around, and I was mostly just excited to see my friends since I had just gotten back from college and hadn’t seen anyone yet. The friend who invited us was the only one who had played. She enjoys the game so much she makes it a point to include it in her Tinder profile.
My friend had lent us all paddles and we just started hitting the ball around, trying to get a rally going. While we were all working up a good sweat, we could also catch up on summer plans and the previous semester shenanigans. No score was kept, no faults were called but we just hit the ball around and chatted. I didn’t expect the sport to be so leisurely and casual.
Fast forward a few weeks after that afternoon, and it is my first day as an intern at a new job.
I had some expectations of the first day like a tour, getting lost on the way to work, a new desk, and meeting new people. What I wasn’t expecting was my first assignment to be learning how to play pickleball. Now, for the second time this month, I was about to encounter more pickleball, but I was excited. I honestly couldn’t wait to play more.
Coincidently enough, the apartment complex I had lived in for about week before my internship started, had pickleball courts. Our second day on the job, we headed to those courts to put our pickleball knowledge and skills to the test.
We attempted to keep score, monitor faults, and stay wary of the “kitchen.” The rules definitely made more sense as you play out the game, but the goal was to get a rally going while sticking to the rules as closely as our rank 1.0 selves could.
Once again, I was met with a leisurely game of pickleball. We sweated, we laughed, no one cried, and most importantly we all had a good time. I got more comfortable with the game the second time around and had a better time.
I’m not about to go pro or anything, but I would genuinely like to play pickleball more often and invite others to enjoy the sport. I have a strong feeling they would get hooked on the pickleball as quickly as I did.
I can understand why now this sport is gaining so much more popularity. It is a low cost, low effort, past time for friends to play.
