WHAT’S THAT RACQUET?

It’s Pickleball!

Odds are you or someone you know is utterly smitten with this sport. What makes the paddle, net and wiffle ball so addictive to so many kinds of Iowans?

BY ADRIA CARPENTER

No matter the question, the answer is always pickleball.

“Pickleball meets you where you are,” said Emma Clark, a career coach at Cornell College.

Clark grew up playing racquetball in Illinois, but the sport isn’t as popular today, so she searched for a racquetball-adjacent activity instead. When the Smithfield Tennis and Pickleball Center in Cedar Rapids reopened last October, Clark found herself drawn to the perforated plastic ball.

She’s not alone. For the third year in a row, pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America, with around 8.9 million active players nationwide, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SIFA).

An estimated 36.5 million people 18 and older, 14 percent of all Americans, played pickleball at least once in 2022, the Association of Pickleball Professionals (APP) reported.

Clark moved back to the Midwest in 2021 with two goals: get active and connect with the LGBTQ community.

“One of the things I looked for was like, ‘Where’s my queer community?’ And I had a really hard time trying to get it,” she said.

Pickleball was a two-paddle-one-ball solution. Clark now runs ICR Pickleball, a casual pickleball group for LGBTQ people and allies in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. She organized the group under the guidance of the Lambda Softball Association of Eastern Iowa (LSA).

“LSA has just been there every step of the way to sort of be like, ‘Here’s how queer sports are working right now,’” she said.

When Clark contacted Smithfield Center to host their games, she didn’t get far into her pitch before the general manager and head of membership eagerly agreed.

“I had all this data I have researched about like, why this is beneficial, why this is a good investment. And I got about one sentence out, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing!’” Clark recalled. “I just really want to hold them up because I think those types of community partners are just really, really important.”

ICR Pickleball had approximately 25 participants of different ages and genders in the winter/spring season, with around eight people per session participating. In addition to LSA, Clark reached out to the Close House, Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays chapters (PFLAG), Cedar Rapids Pride, among others.

Here’s how the game works: A player serves the ball underhanded across the net, from the right box to the left box. After the ball bounces, the opposing player knocks it back across the net. The ball must bounce a second time before returning. Once the ball has bounced in each team’s court, players can volley the ball at any time. In tennis, the server has two chances to hit the ball across the net, but in pickleball, the server has one shot.

If a player doesn’t volley the ball back, whacks the ball while in the area around the net called the kitchen (unless the ball landed in there first), or hits it out of bounds, the round is over. Unlike tennis, only the serving team can score a point. Games are typically played to 11 points, and a team must win by two points.

The serving player continues serving until their team commits a fault. In doubles, both partners get the opportunity to serve before it switches to the other team. If a player’s score is even, then they serve from behind the right box, and vice versa.

Pickleball was created by Joel Pritchard in 1965. Pritchard, later a member of Congress as well as the lieutenant governor of Washington, was bored at his summer home on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle. Along with his friend Bill Bell, he cut paddles from plywood, borrowed a wiffle ball from a neighbor, lowered the net of a badminton court and started playing. Later on, Pritchard, Bell and Barney McCallum formalized the rules, embedding family play and accessibility in the game’s structure.

Today, pickleball has actual paddles instead of plywood cutouts. They’re larger than ping pong paddles, but smaller than a tennis racquet, and shaped like a rectangle with rounded edges. Likewise, the court is larger than a ping pong table and smaller than a tennis court. Four pickleball courts can fit on one tennis court.

The name “pickleball” came from Joel’s wife, Joan Pritchard, a competitive rower. The sport reminded her of a pickle boat—which is manned by a team of leftover rowers who weren’t selected to compete as principal rowers—because pickleball was created from leftover elements of other sports. Some people suggested that the name came from their family dog, Pickles. But the sport predates the dog, Joan said. Pickleball was named the official sport of Washington in 2022.

“It is kind of addictive once you get into it. It’s hard to stop,” said Chuck Golliher, president of the Des Moines Metro Pickleball Club (DMMPC).

In 2017, around 15-20 people in the Des Moines metro area decided to create a nonprofit organization dedicated to pickleball advocacy. Its primary goal was to convince local municipalities to recognize pickleball as a growing sport and provide resources to build and maintain permanent pickleball courts.

“We’re trying to represent the face of pickleball in the metro area,” Golliher said.

Golliher first heard about pickleball from his brother-in-law in Florida. They wanted to check out an athletic facility in the area and hadn’t intended to play. But a man handed them some paddles and said, “Let’s see what you got.”

“The rest is history. From there we got overwhelmed by the game, thought it was fantastic, and just continued playing ever since,”

Golliher said. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many new friends we’ve made … through the sport of pickleball.”

DMMPC has between 350 to 400 active members from Des Moines, West Des Moines, Urbandale, Clive, Perry and Indianola. It hosts semi-regular training workshops and serves as a catalyst for forming casual groups, as well as competitive leagues and tournaments. Golliher has seen players as young as 8, many players in the 50s-to-70s age range and even a handful in their 80s. The club even has some professional players that compete with the Professional Pickleball Association at tournaments in Las Vegas, Austin, Texas, and so on.

When DMMPC began proselytizing pickleball to local leaders, some municipalities were slow to recognize the sport, Golliher said. But now there are courts in Walker Johnston Park in Urbandale, at the MidAmerican Energy Company RecPlex in West Des Moines, the McCollum Waveland Tennis Complex in Des Moines and many more. And private courts like Smash Park, Life Time and the Prairie Ridge Sports Complex now have pickleball accommodations.

“Whenever I hear a project involving recreational facilities, almost always, you’ll see pickleball included,” he said. “Smash Park, which is kind of a leader in leagues in this area, it’s not unusual for their entire league spaces to be filled up within an hour.”

Even with all the new facilities in the area, there’s still a shortage of courts, he said. In the summer, courts are “flooded with people,” though he acknowledged that avid players should drive further distances to less populated courts. For the winter months, Golliher hopes to see more indoor courts available.

Beside the ease of play—anyone can learn the sport in just a few hours—and the low cost barrier of entry—paddles and balls are relatively inexpensive—Golliher said the social component draws people into pickleball.

“It has a lot of appeal to folks that might not have the physical capability to do tennis or something more demanding,” he said. “It’s a sport that anyone can play. It’s very social … The competitive aspect of it is important for many. The social aspect, though, is important for many more.”

For Erin Droll, an Iowa City native and self-described townie, pickleball was the perfect casual activity to socialize and get active.

“I’m running a business, I’m a single mom. And you just have a thing where it’s just like, show up at noon on Sunday and play … It’s phenomenal for me to be able to have that,” said Droll, the secretary for LSA. “I’m not a particularly competitive person. So I don’t know that I’ll ever be particularly good at it. I’m not particularly good at softball, but I like to play.”

Droll had never played pickleball before Clark contacted LSA. But she’d heard of it from her sister and a coworker, a 60-year-old woman who’d duck out of the office early to play. Droll played tennis in high school, so she learned the basics quickly. Beyond the “show up and play” format and low financial costs, Droll appreciated the community’s non-judgmental attitude.

“The most important thing is that people can come, that it’s a safe space where people are valued, and they can be themselves,” she said. “LSA prides itself on being inclusive, and Emma’s group is the same way. There’s no judgment, like you come and you play.”

The pickleball community is committed to meeting someone’s individual needs on the court, whether it’s different levels of skill, different physical abilities or a different socioeconomic status.

Pickleball meets you where you’re at, and that’s especially true for the LGBTQ people.

“How do we connect with each other? How do we create opportunities so that people can find the resources they need? How do we create these spaces for joy?” Clark asked.

The answer, of course, is pickleball.