Is it tennis? Is it badminton? Is it ping pong? No…it’s PICKLEBALL!!!

We both played ping pong and badminton as children.  In fact Dan was a ping pong champion at his small college on Iowa.  Dan lettered in tennis in high school.  He still has his racket....and his letter.

As a child, my dad taught me how to play tennis.  I was never very good at it, but I liked playing.  Since my big brother, Doug, was on the high school tennis team, I turned out for tennis my sophomore year. 

The other reason that I joined the team was that it was the only sport in our high school that girls could play.  I had always played football, baseball, made tree forts, and played all day long with the boys in our neighborhood.  None of the girls did all the fun things that boys did.

Since I was the only girl on the high school tennis team, I made the team.  I played in every varsity game and every match.  There was no junior varsity team.  I played against talented girls, and I was still a beginner. But I had fun.  I would have turned out for tennis the next spring, but I became a cheerleader and cheered on all the boy’s teams.  That was fun too!

Dan started to play racquetball when he was around forty years old.  He played every week with his very good friends Susan, Laurence, and Doug.  These friends tell me that Dan was hard to beat.  He loved racquetball.  After playing, he and his friends would go out to breakfast.  This was one of the highlights of his life for seventeen years.  Then he retired and moved to Whidbey Island, so he could find the love of his life—me.

Because of Dan’s foot problems that resulted in three surgeries and 19” of screws in his right foot, he can no longer run for a tennis ball or play racquetball. 

We bought a ping pong table nine years ago and play almost every week.  Last year we bought a second ping pong table so we can play here at Nuestra Casa and at our cabin.    You have heard of two-car families?  We are a two ping pong table family.

We totally enjoy the game, and have gotten quite good at it.  Dan is much better than me, so there’s no point in playing a game—unless he just wanted to win every time, and I liked spending the game picking the balls off the floor.  Instead we try to see how long we can volley the ball.  We hit some killer shots.  Through the years I have gotten to be a great ping pong player too.  It’s a blast, and we often end up laughing hysterically.

A few days ago we decided to try out the game that is all the rage now in Leisure World—pickleball.  We figured that if our bodies would allow us to play, that we would have fun learning a game that is a cross between badminton, tennis, and ping pong.

We took the plunge and invested a whole $60 in a good, but relatively cheap, set of paddles.  We had never even held a pickleball racket in our hands or seen one up close before.  It even came with balls and a carrying case—we were stoked!

Not surprisingly, we loved playing from our first very unsuccessful volley.  Now after playing three days in a row, we are both sore and stiff in places we’ve never hurt before.  We bought some wrist braces and are liberally using ice on our sore body parts.

But the best news of all…..drum roll…..we have successfully volleyed 15 TIMES!!!

Well, to be honest, our average volley is three, but we’re having a blast.  We have a court reserved for tomorrow.