At my work Christmas Party in December we had some forced co-worker bonding through a series of holiday games. Everyone only agreed to play because of the promise of a raffle, even though the prizes were mostly all purchased from a clearance section somewhere the night before. Thanks to my ring toss skills, I walked away with a set of the cheapest pickleball paddles on the market. I was quite excited about this, since I played it once with my grandfather while visiting him in Florida, and had a blast. (Though old people get very competitive about their pickleball.) None of my friends seemed as thrilled as I was, though, since they knew this meant they’d be roped into playing it with me.
Their assumption was correct. As soon as I felt the first day of what I declared “Pickleball Weather”, I was googling “pickleball courts near me”, and driving to the first one that popped up. I played lots of tennis on my Wii as a kid, so I figured it couldn’t be too hard. Most people who play tennis seem to look down on pickleball, since it’s seen as a sort of easier alternative. Though I wouldn’t say it’s the same as tennis in a difficult sense, if taken seriously I think it could be played on the same scale, since the game follows the same key concepts.
When my friends and I play we tend to make our own rules. Officially the pickleball court is just a smaller version of the tennis one, but we find it more fun to just use the full court and do some extra running. Arguably the most fun part of it all is finding over the top “cellys” (celebrations for after getting a point to piss off whoever you’re playing against) to hit after scoring, despite how ridiculous they all might be. My personal favorite has got to be using two paddles as defibrillator pads to pretend to revive your teammate.
As similar as pickleball may be to tennis, members of either sport’s respective community seem to try and separate the two as much as possible. The court that my friends and I go to play at has a sign stating the hours it’s open, with tennis having majority of the day while pickleball has only a few hours where it’s allowed to be played. This is partly because of the sound difference between the two; pickleball is much louder, as the balls are made of plastic, and many tennis players find it to be annoying. Personally, I think this is a bit silly, but then again the sport is named “PICKLEball”. I’m not sure it gets more unserious than that.
While trying to research why exactly it was given that ridiculous name, I discovered that the game was founded around the idea of taking “left over” concepts from all different sports and putting them together into one simple game that everyone can play. I think that this is a really beautiful concept, especially when looking at my own group of thrown together friends, who clicked together so perfectly despite all of our differences. With such a great starting point and central idea, you’d think they could have come up with a better name that doesn’t make the game sound like a joke. Maybe some day pickleballers world wide will be able to overcome their laughable title and be taken seriously. Til then, I think I’ll stick to searching for “pickleball cellys” on TikTok.
