Pickleballers unite!

WASILLA — On the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, the MTA Sports Center’s gymnasium was packed with enthusiastic pickleball players of all ages. People from across the state, even from as far away as Soldotna and Fairbanks made the trip to the Valley to compete. Over the span of two days, men and women competed in singles and doubles for the illustrious gold, pickleball medal.

Blending components of tennis, badminton and table tennis, pickle ball asks players use paddles to smack green Wiffle balls back and forth over a net. Several of the tournament coordinators and players referred to pickleball as the “fastest growing sport.” About 30 people battled it out to reign supreme in the Valley’s only officially sanctioned Pickleball Tournament.

“If you’re a serious pickleball player, you’ll go anywhere for a tournament,” said Mardene Collins, tournament director.

Pickleball is essentially a scaled down version of tennis with its own special set of equipment and rules. Pickleball originated on Bainbridge Island, Washington, in the lull of a summer afternoon in 1965. Former State Rep. Joel Pritchard and two of his friends, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum, returned from golf. Their families were bored to tears so they tried to set up badminton, but to no avail. No one could find the shuttlecock. Legend has it that they improvised with a Wiffle ball, lowered the badminton net, and crafted paddles of plywood from a nearby shed.

The origin of the name has some controversy, however. One side claims that the game was name after Pritchard's family dog, Pickles; and the other side believes the name actually came from Pritchard's mother’s own term "pickle boat," the slowest boat in a race. Several online articles state that the dog Pickles, didn’t show up well after they started playing the game. What started as a simple yard game has since grown in popularity and rallied millions of people from younger to older across the world to play it seriously.

“The better you get at it, the more exercise you get without realizing you’re getting exercise,” Collins said.

According to Collins, like anything in Alaska, the sport was slow to catch on but once it did, it blew up. Since 2015, the number of pickleball players in Alaska grew substantially each year. She said that she sees new players at the MTA Center every week. She said the initial appeal was to older people because it is less physically demanding on the body than tennis. It eventually caught on with younger generations, too. There were players at the tournament with ages ranging from their 20s to their 70s.

“Age doesn’t matter —depending how long the games last,” laughed Pat Hale, a middle-aged gentleman and avid pickleballer.

One 35-year-old, Jason Bedunnah, came up from Soldotna with his wife, Shari. They competed both days and Shari won the women’s singles. Bedunnah said he may get a motor home just to travel and play pickleball. He said that while it may look cheesy at first glance, people get very competitive during tournaments.

According to men’s singles winner, Taylor Hodges, pickleball is “explosive” in nature. That’s what he likes about it. The rules and gameplay of pickleball are similar to other racquet sports but there is a lot more “soft game.”

In the pickleball court, there is an area near the net called the “kitchen” where players cannot spike the ball. They have to be further back to slam the ball. Hodges said it’s about “80 percent a soft game.” He is transitioning from playing tennis and said that’s what he sees a lot of, people migrating from more physically demanding sports to those like pickleball. He’s made a lot of friends along the way.

“You get to play with a lot of different people with different styles,” Hodges said.

For more information about pickleball and tournaments, visit: pickleballtournaments.com