All-Pitch Press: The Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in DC is a popular spot for pickleball.
On a cloudy evening, a man holding the hand of a small child wearing a neon backpack pauses in her stroll, listening to the chatter, laughter and whoops fill the air. It’s a Friday after hours, but the two aren’t walking past a busy bar – they’ve pulled up to the fence at Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in northeast DC.
“What are you playing at?”
“Pickleball!”
The cheering chorus comes from several players on the nearest pitch, members of a tight-knit group called LGBTQIA2S+ Pickleballers, who play weekly. Despite rain in the forecast, the four pickleball courts are full with four players each, and more players are waiting on the sidelines. As passers-by continue walking, a woman shouts: “Anyone can play, even your child!
The interaction is typical of the pickleball community, where players tend to jump at the chance to get family, friends or complete strangers involved in a game. This enthusiasm – some might call it fanaticism – helps explain why racquet sport has increased by nearly 40% over the past two years, making it the fastest growing sport in the United States, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
“I was walking around my local YMCA in Howard County, and I heard this ‘pop pop pop,’” says Sonny Tannan, who now coaches pickleball for players of all skill levels, of his first encounter with the game in 2018. “I stuck my head in the gym, and it was a gentleman giving a pickleball lesson. After they were done, I walked over to say, ‘What the hell it is ?’ And he said, ‘It’s pickleball. Here, get a paddle.’
For Tannan, it was love at first sight. These days he leads Washington Metro YMCA Pickleball program, which he helped launch last year, and has won several medals at national tournaments. He describes the sport as life changing and “super addictive”.
The simple rules of the game and the small size of the field allow even beginner players to feel competent, even competitive. “It’s an easy sport to learn, a hard sport to master,” says D Fox, an everyday player who started the LGBTQ-centric pickleball group last September. Regardless of their athletic abilities, Fox says, players can “walk away with a sense of accomplishment.”
The game is a blast, and it’s easy to get addicted. In the winter, pickleball players used to outdoor courts (you can play indoors or outdoors) will grab the paddles in their hands rather than skipping a game. “It’s so cold in the winter that the ball will crack,” says Laura Penn, a regular at Fox’s Friday pickleball games. Another player, Miriam Zoila Pérez, describes cleaning up puddles on the pitch with an ice scraper and a towel so she could play on rainy days.
This devotion may explain what Scott Parker, the USA Pickleball Association Ambassador for DC, calls “skyrocketing” growth, both locally and internationally. There are pickleball blogs, such as Dinkheads.com. Hollywood stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio, have set up courts in their backyards. Members are pushing for pickleball to become an Olympic sport. (Not everyone’s a fan: The town of Ridgewood, New Jersey, limited playing hours at a set of pickleball courts after neighbors complained about noise.)
TV personality Greta Von Susteren and her attorney husband John Coale built a pickleball court in their DC home years ago, replacing an indoor swimming pool. The pair now play about twice a week, Coale says, with family and friends occasionally joining them on court for a game of doubles.
In DC, the Department of Parks and Recreation has seen the number of pickleball participants jump from 70 to 100 in 2018 to 600 or 700 today, according to Andrew Acquadro, who directs the department’s tennis and pickleball programs.
DPR now hosts pickleball tournaments in the fall and spring. The first tournament, in 2018, took place indoors with around thirty players; this spring has had at least 80, says Acquadro. The department also runs classes and other pickleball initiatives, including an “adaptive pickleball” program for veterans with PTSD and injuries. Acquadro hopes to expand adaptive programming to serve more people, including children with disabilities.
Since launching its pickleball program in 2015, DPR has added more than 30 courts to recreation centers across the city. But places to play, especially where pickleball lines have been painted on existing tennis courts, are still in high demand. “There have been times when my group of friends that I play with have all been there, and it’s like 20 of us are playing on two courts,” Penn says. “Some people are upset that people are using tennis courts for pickleball because there are a lot more people trying to play than playing tennis.” Fox says they chose Friday nights because Turkey Thicket weekends are so “busy” they “wouldn’t even think about it.”
On a typical Friday night, about 20 people show up to play. “For queer, non-binary, gender-nonconforming, trans people, we’re in the midst of a really tough political time,” Fox says. “There’s been a lot of backlash around the exclusion of trans people and trans youth from sport, so any time we can come together and have a queer community through sport, through play, I think It’s a real act of resistance.”
Until recently, pickleball was dominated by retirees; nearly a third of regular players nationally are still over 65. But the demographics have rejuvenated in recent years, both on the professional circuit and among people who play for fun. Fox’s group, for example, had participants as young as 14 and as old as 80 in Friday games. Most are in their thirties and forties. Being younger isn’t necessarily an advantage in a sport with a small pitch: In pickleball, strategy is often more important than raw speed or strength. Fox, a 48-year-old player who plays almost every day, says he lost to opponents in the mid-eighties.
Parker, the USA Pickleball Association ambassador for DC, believes the demographic shift has been caused, at least in part, by the pandemic. As many young adults embraced more flexible work-from-home schedules, there was a demand for new ways to socialize safely. Even as happy hours and nightclub crowds return, many of those who have taken up the sport during the pandemic — including Fox, Pérez and Penn — say they are absolutely sticking with it, and with each other.
“Reminds me of that movie, brown sugar, and one of the lines is ‘How old were you when you fell in love with hip-hop?’ Penn says. “You could ask a similar question, because you fall in love with pickleball, you can’t help it. But you don’t just fall in love with the sport. You fall in love with the community.
