Pickleball gaining enthusiastic following in Madison County

Sep. 18—ANDERSON — The origin of Madison County's pickleball craze — at least a small part of it — can be traced to a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

Four years ago, Kevin Huff and his wife were on an excursion to the Cayman Islands. They were planning to spend a day on Grand Cayman, but inclement weather prevented their ship from docking there that day. To pass the time, the couple decided to investigate a pickleball game taking place on one of the ship's upper decks.

Instantly, Huff was hooked.

"I was a tennis player and a racquetball player," he said. "This allowed me to enjoy a racket sport again without the abuse on my body that the other sports gave me. It's the most addicting game I've ever played in my life."

When Huff returned from his vacation, he asked the elders at Bethany Christian Church, where he was a member, if he could purchase nets and other equipment in order to organize pickup games in the church's gymnasium.

"He gets very into things," said his friend Brian Schultz, a software engineer and adjunct professor at Anderson University. "He really pushed a lot of us into giving it a try. I showed up and tried playing it and thought, 'Wow, this is really fun and really easy to pick up.' The better that I got at it, the more into it I got."

Pickleball, a sport combining elements of badminton, tennis and ping-pong, is one of the fastest growing recreational activities in the country. According to the Sport and Fitness Industry Association, in a five-year period ending in 2019, Americans' participation in pickleball grew by more than 7%. The number of pickleball courts and other places to play has mushroomed, growing by an estimated 385% since 2010, and a recent study by the Pickleball Participant Report put the number of active players at an estimated 2.8 million.

In 2020, while the coronavirus pandemic shuttered many fitness centers, pickleball flourished. Sporting goods stores rapidly sold out of portable nets, paddles and other equipment as homebound consumers created makeshift courts in their driveways and on neighborhood streets.

"Once you learn the rules, there's a lot of strategy that comes into play," said Carson Wallace, a junior at Anderson University who with his brother, Mason, won a national junior doubles division pickleball title in Chicago in 2019.

"People want to do something that's social and recreational in nature, and pickleball fits the bill," said Diana Jones, a kinesiology professor who retired from AU last month and plays regularly at Bethany Christian. "I think the community is realizing what a valuable recreational activity it is for people regardless of their age, but also just the thought of community, bringing people together."

Organizations including the Madison County Pickleball Association host leagues at several venues in the county, including the Anderson Township Trustee Community Center, and pickup games are common at Bethany Christian, Pulaski Park and other locations.

Local pickleball enthusiasts are excited about plans for dedicated courts at Mays Park, as well as courts at Shadyside Park that are scheduled to open in mid-October.

"Creating more pickleball courts for Anderson was an easy decision. We could build new and turn existing tennis courts into dual-purpose courts as other communities have done," said Anderson Mayor Thomas Broderick Jr. "It's an affordable sport that has several health benefits for older adults who may not be able to play tennis or badminton like they used to. The popularity of the game also helps us to advance our quality-of-life and quality-of-place goals for Anderson."

The city's decision to include those courts in park improvement and upgrade projects is a sign, Schultz said, that the sport is moving into the mainstream.

"I think that it's really gained a lot of momentum over the last three years," Schultz said. "There's more and more people that are picking it up, particularly because the Madison County Pickleball Association and Bethany Christian Church have classes to learn how to play, and a lot of people just randomly show up to try it.

"I think that as the courts continue to open, people are going to start seeing people play and be interested in trying it out themselves, and it'll grow even more," he added.

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