As the new year begins, we all look for new fun ways to stay active. One of the sports growing in popularity in the U.S. is pickleball, which combines the recreation of pingpong with the activity of tennis. Many on the Central Coast—including locals at the Buellton Recreation Center—have found the sport a fun, exciting way to get moving.
Pickleball is played on a miniature tennis court with an oversized pingpong paddle. The ball used is normally a Wiffle ball, and the scoring is similar to badminton, where only the serving team can score. Games are generally played to a score of 7, 11, 15, or 21.
The games are played on either an indoor or outdoor surface and normally include a modified tennis net. The court is 40 feet long by 20 feet across, so players can get in quite a workout chasing the ball across the court.
Pickelball is usually played with two-person teams, or doubles, but players can play singles matches as well. The actual game play is similar to tennis and pingpong: One team serves to another and the ball must bounce before being returned. After the initial serve and return, the teams can choose to volley or allow the ball to bounce once, just as it would be in traditional tennis.
“There is whole lot of strategy involved, and you would think that it wouldn’t have a whole lot of strategy,” said Kym Hughes, current player in the ongoing league at the Buellton Recreation Center.
The league in Buellton is co-ed and open to all ages. There are 30 players currently signed up in the league, ranging in age from 12 to 83, Hughes explained.
The sport isn’t too strenuous, but is still aerobic, Hughes said, so it naturally welcomes a wide range of players.
“It’s one of the fast growing sports because everyone can do it. Kids can do it,” she said. “We have people that are 83 years old and they play with us. And they kill us.”
In Santa Maria, two community centers have hosted pickleball activities in the past year. The Minami Community Center offers open pickleball play to all ages and skill levels on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to noon. During these times, loaner equipment is available.
The Minami Community Center also boasts two outdoor regulation pickleball courts available throughout the week, but participants do need to bring their own portable net and paddles if not attending when loaner equipment is available. Also last March, the Edwards Community Center hosted pickleball games through the Santa Maria Recreation and Parks Department, and also offered classes on how to play the game.
Santa Barbara County isn’t the only place where the pickleball craze has caught on. There is a Facebook page for a pickleball team in Nipomo that, according to the page, recently played in tournaments in SLO and Ventura counties.
Hughes also has experience with traveling to play, and said that it was fairly common among pickleball players. The excitement to play has become greater and greater among the Buellton team, she said.
“We travel all over. We go to Cambria. We go to Morro Bay. We go to Santa Barbara,” she said. “People are traveling and they will call specifically to these areas and they say, ‘Is there pickleball around?’”
Former Washington state Congressman Joel Pritchard is credited with inventing the sport on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. The USA Pickleball Association was formed in 1984 to help advance the sport. By 1990, pickleball was in all 50 states, and by the early 2000s, the game was accepted by the Arizona Senior Olympics and the Hunstman World Senior Games.
Despite all the momentum the sport has gained, it is still relatively obscure, but leagues like the one at Buellton Rec Center are changing that. In addition to playing in the league, Hughes is also the league organizer.
She said she has high hopes for the sport locally and hopes the success of the league can spur enough action to get permanent courts in the Santa Ynez Valley.
“Everybody else has them; Santa Ynez needs to step up,” Hughes said.
Contact Jason O’Neill through Interim Managing Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.