Pickelball-R-Us

For a while now, I have been mentioning about pickelball but other than putting a few video, I haven't been describing it to its just value.

What do you need to play Pickelball?

A paddle, a ball, running shoes, a court and someone that is willing to be use as a target practice, I mean someone that want to play and have fun.

A good paddle will be around $ 80. (US or CDN) but you can buy one for $ 15. Most place I played at had spare paddles available.

You don't need to buy balls, but if you buy some it's about $ 15 for a dozen.

As you can see, it's not an expensive sport to practice. As a beginner, you probably going to have no cost. But as you get hook on, you might want to get your own paddle. I played at a center where they charged $ 3 to play all morning and you didn't need to buy a membership.

Who can play?

From the picture it's hard to tell but for comparison purpose, 4 pickelball courts can fit in one tennis court. So a lot of pickelball player are reformed tennis player that were tired of playing on an over-size court not able to play tennis anymore. I didn't play tennis so this was not my case.

I was introduce to the game by one of my neighbor. I can still remember the first few games, sometime I hit the ball... sometime the ball hit me. I was given all the rules at once and felt like I would never understand what I was doing there. But quickly, I got it! It was not that complicated.

During winter, I played a lot. I played against a man that had lung cancer. After a game, he had to sit down and get oxygen. But he was there and smiling.

One couple I met, the gentleman had both knees replace the year before and he was very good.

I played against people well in their seventies and got beat by them. Possibly even in their eighties, but if ask I'll denied everything!

I played with over-weight and thin people, women, man, slow and fast players, beginners, intermediate and advance skill players.

So really it's a game for every one (Kids pick it up so fast). You don't need to be an athlete, personally, I played to get in shape. I was not in shape before.

Where can I play?

All winter I played mostly inside gyms. In the summer, I'll played mostly outside on a paved court. A lot of tennis club has convert a few court for pickelball. The best thing to do is to check with your local sport facility.

Some people I talked to organized pickelball with their church. All you really need is a place where you can have the lines set up and you can buy a net (around $ 125) and voila you are ready! One of the place I played at was within a church complex. The person responsible was charging a dollar to each player to buy tape. Every week he had to remove the “lines”, I'm not sure why but that was not a big deal.

There are serious players and players that are there just for the fun of it. We all encourage each other, and I don't know how often I missed a shot because I was bend over laughing... it's so much fun. I'm not a very social kind of person but with this game, I get to meet so many great friends.

Do you play? Are you going to try it?