Pickleball

My favorite no-longer-obscure racquet sport

A place to explore: The pickleball courts at Hill’s Resort on Priest Lake, ID

I’ve been playing pickleball since the mid-1980s.

This is weird. The sport was an esoteric pastime for the first several decades of its existence.

According to the timeline on USAPickleball.org, the game was invented in 1965 by couple of men on Bainbridge Island (near Seattle). In 1976 the first tournament was played, although most of the competitors didn’t really know what they were playing. In 2001 a tournament at Happy Trails RV Resort in Surprise, AZ drew 100 players. It was the largest event ever played to that point.

Things started picking up for the sport in 2008 with more media exposure. By 2022, the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) named pickleball the fastest-growing sport in America for the second consecutive year.

Pickleball popularity has continued to explode, taking over tennis courts, YMCA schedules, and parental social calendars across the world.

But back in the 1980s, the sport was only known in certain hotspots that just happened to have a pickleball court. And one of those hotspots has long been Hill’s Resort.

Situated in Luby Bay on Priest Lake, a lake in Northern Idaho, Hill’s Resort has been around for 79 years. My grandparents, mom, self, and now my children have been vacationing at the lake for almost all of those 79 years. I haven’t been able to nail down the story about when or why the resort decided to pave the front of the lodge with pickleball courts, but it was sometime in the 1980s, because some of my first memories are playing on those courts.

I don’t have pictures of myself playing, but here are my kiddos on those same courts.

Aubrey pickleballing

Henley pickleballing

My brother and I were obsessed with the sport as kids. After a week of playing at the lake, we would get home and chalk out the exact court dimensions in front of our house. We and our friends would play game after game, pausing to move when cars came by and arguing about whether the ball would have gone over the net (we had no net).

Besides the aforementioned childhood neighbors, nobody ever knew what I was talking about when I talked about pickleball.

Until about five years ago.

The ironic thing is that I don’t play pickleball now. I often fantasize about joining a league. But on top of teaching, marathon training, writing, and parenting children with busy schedules, it’s never quite works out.

But now, in between writing these paragraphs, I’m checking leagues and schedules. A new indoor pickleball court just opened in my city. Maybe writing this piece will be just the impetus I need to squeeze pickleball back into my life.

I hope so.

A lesson to teach: Dual timelines

Naturally, this gets me thinking about teaching timelines.

As part of my “intro to history” unit during the first couple weeks of school, I always spend a day or two teaching my sophomores about timelines using my friend Brad’s slide deck, which he’s generously permitted me to share with you fine folks. Here it is.

The slides cover timeline basics and common FAQs like what’s up with the whole BC/BCE and AD/CE switchover. Brad also gives students tips for how to think about the fact that dates like 1776 are in 18th century, something that always confuses students.

One slide on the presentation (#12) lists six dates and asks students to put them in timeline order. Here is the blank timeline that I give students when I get to this slide. Then I have students make a timeline of their own life, thinking of 5-6 important events and plotting them along a line. It’s a good get-to-know you type of activity.

Thinking about how my life fits into the official pickleball timeline makes me wonder if I can add something like this to my timeline activity. Maybe it would be fun to have students think about some activity that they enjoy, do a bit of research, and complete a dual timeline that shows the evolution of the activity on one side and their own life’s events on the other side. I’ll let you know if I end up doing that when school starts again in September.

A book to read: PICKLEBALLERS by Ilana Long

Okay teachers, this is NOT a book for the classroom. School is out, so it’s time to read romance novels :)

Also, I know I usually review historical books here at Jenna Repeats History, but there are no historical romance novels involving pickleball. This comtemporary goodie was published in 2024.

With Priest Lake in the background, of course.

PICKLEBALLERS is about a Meg, who finds pickleball after her stupid husband up and divorces her. She joins a pickleball community, makes a couple friends, and worries about her life.

And then, romance!

A romance blooms on the Bainbridge Ferry. Over clam chowder of course.

Because this is a romance novel, the man-from-the-ferry ends up being an environmental consultant who wants to shut down her community’s pickleball court. Miscommunication problems and pickleball puns volley back and forth between the couple for most of the novel.

Sure, it’s a little cheesy (espeically the first few chapters), but I got into the book around the midway point. A pickleball playing protagonist who struggles to find herself after a marriage into which she’d disappeared was quite relateable. She found her way back to herself with travel, art, nature, good friends, and (of course) pickleball. Travel, art, nature, friends, and sports are indeed the cure to most of life’s problems (when you are in your twenties and thirties anyway).

Also, this book leans into ALL the Pacific Northwest vibes. Besides the ferries and clam chowder, there are mountains, hiking trips, salty sea air, rainclouds, rocky beaches, and a thick blanket of evergreen trees. I always love a PNW book, and this one delivered.

Happy traveling, reading, and not teaching! See y’all next Sunday.

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