Adventures in Pickleball…

When I retired everyone said, “Now that you have all this free time what will you do?” I would stare back at those people and think, “What won’t I do?” This first year of retirement has been filled with new things, solo travel, learning to draw and paint, volunteering, camping and generally saying yes to all the opportunities presented me. So when my “friend” ( and I use term loosely) said let’s learn to play Pickleball I said yes, and then I said, ” What the heck* is Pickleball?”

Using my super-power, “Looking Stuff* Up on The Wikipedia”, I found that Pickleball is, and I quote here… “A paddleball sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton, and table tennis. Two or four players use solid paddles made of wood or composite materials to hit a perforated polymer ball, similar to a Wiffle ball, over a net.” The USA Pickleball Association or USAPA (yes that is a real thing) says it is the fastest growing sport you have never heard of and; in the last six years the sport has had a 650 percent increase in numbers. I love a good trend so I jumped on this bandwagon with both feet.

As soon as I could, I signed up for a community education class with my partner Dan. That first night we walked into the Gym and I knew I had found my people…or so I thought. The crowd was not as blue haired as I imagined it would be, and as luck would have it a couple I had known through teaching was there. At first sight this class was filled with what I considered to be fun people.

Our instructor Coach Carl, was super knowledgable and had been playing for years. He was encouraging and eager for us to love the sport that he adored. Lesson one was mostly Carl running through the basics and us practicing our craft through drills, changing partners often. That Shangra-La was not to be the norm, the next week we got down to business.

After some instruction and drill time Carl said it was time to play. He divided us up into groups; I want to pause here and say I know a little something about grouping people. As a teacher, one is always making groups and naming them. The good group is something like The Blue Birds and the shit group is The Buzzards. It quickly became apparent that Dan was a Blue Bird and much to my dismay I was a Buzzard. I love a good challenge, so right there I decided to work hard and maybe by the end of the night I WOULD be a Blue Bird too. The joke was on me…

The games got started and I could see the Blue Birds out of the corner of my eye. They looked like they were floating on air, their paddles never missed, their serves were low and fast. I hated and admired them all at the same time. Conversely, my group looked like THEY had two left feet and were playing with blind-folds on. I was obviously placed in the wrong group.

After the first game Carl stopped us and we rotated. The winners went to the right and the LEARNERS went to the left. Who was he kidding we all knew LEARNERS was Picklespeak for LOSERS! I moved LEFT again and again, I moved left all night! Meanwhile Dan was always moving right, at one point he was so far away from me I thought he was in another time zone. This was not shaping up to be what I had imagined. Maybe Carl saw a flaw in my play and I was put in the correct group, maybe I was a Buzzard…

Week after week we attended class, Dan, the WINNER, always moving right and me, the LEARNER always moving left. One night we were so far apart I had to Uber home without him. 😦 I was LEARNING a lot but not fast enough. And by the end of the session this Buzzard had NEVER won a game!!! Man that was a crushing blow to my ego…

Somehow Dan talked me into another 6 week class. This time Carl was off in Mexico playing in Pickleball tournaments and no doubt telling tales about the “Super Buzzar” he met the fall before. Our new teachers seemed nice and we got off to a good start.

The second week came and again we were put into groups. This time there were two sets of Bluebirds and two sets of Buzzards. It appeared that I was the youngest and most agile of the Buzzards and if you know me I know what your thinking…no the others did not come with portable oxygen tanks! That second night I actually won a few games. Half of me wanted to jump the net like some Wimbledon champ, the other half was saying, “calm down Billy Jean these people are two decades older than you. As of this week we will be 4 weeks in, and although I’m not a Bluebird yet I have been seeing more wins than losses.

In the end I realized slow and steady wins the race. But I gotta say this Pickleball race feels super long and I am a super slow “Learner”… I am enjoying my new life, and even though I complain I’m always looking for a good game of Pickleball. If any of you see Coach Carl in Mexico tell him I finally won a game!

*You may have noticed two spots in the blog that had an asterisk, this my friends is where I had to edit because the original words were deemed too offensive for Facebook and therefore I was unable to advertise the post. And no that is not a joke!