One Man's Journey into the Pickleball Community

I live in Southern California, whose climate lends itself to outdoor sports and fun in the sun. I have taken full advantage of this climate by playing sports, both recreationally and competitively for my entire life. Sports has been an outlet for me. It helps me relieve stress, take my mind off of “adulting” and feeds my competitive nature.

So, when COVID-19 hit, and things shut down a big part of my life, my outlet, my pleasure, was taken away. I tried running (again), but me and running do not see eye to eye, plus my nightly runs didn’t feed my competitive fire.

Interestingly, running did lead me to pickleball. On my nightly runs, I would stride past a local park and see a group of people hitting a ball around, making these strange, hollow popping sounds when they hit it. A couple of times I would stop and watch and the people all looked like they were having fun and some of the people were actually hitting the ball pretty hard.

After running past the group for about 2 weeks, I decided to stop by and have a closer look. I remember walking up to the chain link fence that encloses the courts and watching the group laugh, celebrate and have fun playing. As I stood on the outside of the fence, one of the players turned to me and asked me if I played. I told him I didn’t and so he gave me a quick overview of the game and asked me to watch a couple of points and gave me instructions on how the game is played. He also told me about how their drop in court worked and everyone was welcome. Maybe I was starving for an outlet, or the competition or just was convinced by this kind fellow, but I ended up buying a paddle and joining them the next night, and I had a blast.

Now I had played racquet sports a lot, but stepping on the court and trying to hit that holey, neon yellow ball was crazy hard at first. The ball didn’t bounce, fly or sound like any ball I had ever played with, plus my serve and volley tennis game helped me give up a lot of points that first night. But, I returned to play the next night and the next, and the next.

I have been playing now for 6 months and really love the game. The key to my enjoyment is the people I play with. These are the people who gave me tips and pointers and explained the rules. They would then promptly thrash me on the court, because their dink game was a force to be reckoned with. Over the 6 months, my game has improved quite a bit and I can say I hold my own on the court, but my roots were really established when I connected with the pickleball community at my local park.

My recommendation for any newbs looking to get into the game is find a supportive, fun group of picklers who don’t mind welcoming you and helping you get better. I still thank them to this day for their encouragement, their tips and the fun we have on a nightly basis. I have grown to love the game, the competition and that “weird” hollow pop when the ball is hit, thanks to the group that welcomed me in when I was new and let me be part of their pickleball community.