Pickleball, born on Bainbridge, growing in popularity

One of the fastest growing sports in America is pickleball, invented on Bainbridge island in 1965 by Joel Pritchard (who served in Congress and as lieutenant governor), Bill Bell and Barney McCallum.

The three came home from a round of golf and found their families bored. They attempted to play badminton but couldn’t find the shuttlecock. So they improvised with a Wiffle ball, lowered the badminton net and built some paddles out of plywood. Presto, a new game was born.

Depending on who you believe, it was named after the Pritchards' dog (Pickles) or after a boat (the Pickle Boat).

McCallum, 91, and living in a Seattle retirement home wouldn’t comment on that. But he recently allowed seven international pickleball champions to stay at his Pleasant Beach home on Bainbridge for a week as part of their research for a book on the sport.

McCallum said the sport “kind of happened by accident, just to entertain some kids. A lot has changed since then. The game has grown multi-fold.”

Now people are building their own home courts – both indoors and outdoors – and communities are striping tennis courts with pickleball lines. 

Scott Evans, recreation program coordinator for the Bremerton parks department, said two courts at Lions Field and the one at the senior center in Manette have pickleball lines. Evans runs a pickleball program at Sheridan Park gym Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays where up to 20 people show up to play on three courts.

“Over the last three years the program has really, really taken off,” says Evans. “You can buy portable nets and people are putting them up in their driveways and backyards. It’s really amazing.”

The game is a combination of tennis, badminton and table tennis. Because the courts are smaller than tennis, it attracts seniors. It is more of a strategy game and that also makes it attractive.

The best player in West Sound is Port Orchard’s Gregg Guidi, a 1982 graduate of North Mason, where he was a superior all-around athlete. He is among the 336 men that the United States of America Pickleball Association gives its top rating of 5.0.

Guidi, a parole officer with Peninsula Work Release, says, “You go to Arizona and Florida and they are tearing up tennis courts and building pickleball courts.”

According to the USAPA, there are nearly 4,000 places to play pickleball in America. The Villages, a big retirement community in Florida, has the most courts at 140.

Don Roy, a retired physical education teacher and volleyball coach at Cedar Heights Junior High in Port Orchard, now lives six months a year in The Villages. When he’s at his place on Erickson Lake in Mason County, he plays at the Gig Harbor YMCA or at Sehmel Homestead Park in Gig Harbor.

“The reason why it’s growing so fast is it’s easy on the body as you get older,” he says. “There is not as much pounding and running, and it’s more of a social game. Lots of people aren’t ranked. They just go out and play because they love the game.”

Port Angeles has the Pickleball Palace. The city, in conjunction with local Elks, converted two city tennis courts into six courts that receive maximum play.

George Raft built a $60,000 building just to play pickleball. Raft said his indoor facility in the Burley area was finished about a year and half ago and is 64 feet long, 30 feet wide and 18 feet high at its lowest point.

He and wife, Kathleen, got excited about the sport while watching people playing it at the Gig Harbor YMCA and the couple started playing five years ago.

Paul Williams, who for the past 26 years has been the music teacher at Olympic High School, built an outdoor court on his property. He started playing the sport at Olympic High on Fridays at 5 a.m. in the school gym with athletic trainer Scott Peck, former strength and conditioning coach John Freeman and former principal Bob Barnes. 

Guidi shows up at Williams’ court and has helped former Sequim High School tennis coach Doug Hastings put on a couple clinics.

“I have a strong tennis background and about three years ago I changed the path,” Hastings says. “Someone loaned me a paddle and I went home and told my family we are going to play pickleball now.

“The learning curve is quite fast. After a couple times out you can be up to speed where you have to go. You are basically hitting the ball instead of playing fetch.”

After winning all the events he entered in the Rally in the Valley in Albany, Ore., Hastings was bumped up to a 5.0 player, one of 44 men players in Washington State so rated.

There are eight pickleball courts being built in Sequim that will be ready probably by next spring, and there are 250 members now in the Sequim Picklers organization.

One of the good things about the game it tends to level the playing field. You don’t have to be a great athlete.

“People who know how to play it well can beat a very athletic person who doesn’t understand the game well,” Hastings says.

Guidi is up about 100 pounds since high school and college (he and Dave Heaverlo are the only two baseball pitchers to throw no-hitters at Central Washington), but still has good success on the pickleball courts.

“I don’t play in too many tournaments,” Guidi says. “I’m too fat to play. I like bad food too much. I just eat bad crap ­ ‑ pizza, burgers, fries, milk shakes, Costco hot dogs and Mountain Dew.”

Don’t mistake Guide’s “Lou Holtz’s oh gee” approach (“I can’t bend over to tie my shoes”) for being an easy mark. He’s not.

“I get on the pickleball court and I just move,” he says. “I have no idea how. I laugh about it all the time.” 

Terry Mosher is a former sports writer at the Kitsap Sun who publishes The Sports Paper at sportspaper.org. Reach him at bigmosher@msn.com.