Everything you need to know (and more!) about pickleball for the home or office.
Pickleball has been on my radar for a long long time. My mother has been a pickleball player since the 1980s when she started with a group in the early 1980s in the Bay Area. My uncle (who is a lawyer, but lives in Santa Cruz) started playing pickleball with a buddy a while back and he said he felt like his eyes would pop out of his head when he was playing. He was the opposite of me – he loved pickleball for its many health benefits. So I joined the group, but I wasn’t the most experienced player in the group, and I was still new to the sport. By the time I was 18, the group had folded, and I didn’t see any pickleball in the off-season again until 2008. Since 2008, I have played pickleball in parks, at a gym, at my home, and at my friends’ houses. I’m still learning the game, but it has been a great fit for me.
It took me 5-7 years of practice to feel confident enough to join a league, which turned me off to it for a few years. After taking lessons, I felt more confident, had better technique, and felt comfortable with the sport. I started playing in the Bay Area and, over the past 3-4 years, I have had the privilege of playing in leagues all across California. I have had the opportunity to play in clubs with all different personalities and abilities. But now I am at a point where I know enough to play on my own without the help of a group. On the last day of school, I got a Facebook message from a friend who plays in a league. He says that he wanted to play with me and see how it would go – which was a perfect opportunity for me to play a new sport!
Now that I am playing on my own, I have learned so much – from learning how to throw a pickle ball over a net, from the most basic of tactics, to the more advanced. I have learned that it is best to practice one-on-one and build your own style. It also seems to have made me an excellent athlete – I have been running, swimming, and jumping for the past 3 years
