Pickleball relished

The actions of congressmen can have lasting effects on culture even 50 years later. The late U.S. Rep. Joel Pritchard, R-Wash., his family, and neighbors are still having influence from their 1965 backyards. A sport they invented is spreading across the country and taking root in some churches.

The sport is pickleball. The sport’s ticking and tocking of Wiffle balls off oversized paddles draws in the ears, while visually, the mishmash of tennis, badminton, and pingpong toys with the eyes. “It’s like being 10 inches tall and playing on the top of a pingpong table,” Marc Healy of Albany, N.Y., told The Daily Gazette.

The USA Pickleball Association (USAPA) estimates roughly 400,000 people play nationwide—doubling from just three years ago. And while senior centers and schools adopt the modified badminton courts in droves, churches are quietly helping drive the surge as well.

Bob Atherton of Willow Hills Baptist Church in Prescott, Ariz., is one of the game’s ambassadors. Willow Hills believers play alongside atheists and Buddhists. “But we all find fellowship together,” Atherton said. “And in our viewpoint, that’s what Christ would have wanted us to do.” The Willow Hills club has grown to more than 350 players in less than four years. A similar USAPA group at First Friends Church in Canton, Ohio, fills six courts with 100 regular players. With few enough places to play that the USAPA still maintains a database, some churches offer gymnasiums free of charge.

The Pritchards birthed the game to occupy bored kids and refined it to include the whole family. Rules like underhanded serves level the playing field from power games like tennis. “The way this fits into the churches,” Atherton told me, “is … as a tool to foster fellowship among many different age groups.”

Ben Sialega, a partner with Atherton, took pickleball to his birthplace of American Samoa in October. The South Pacific territory knew no pickleball before the trip, when Sialega visited churches and schools to teach children and train new instructors. Instead of paddles, impatient schoolkids sometimes used their notebooks and slippers (the island term for flip-flops). Larry Magalasin, the island’s 15-year-old tennis champion, didn’t want to leave, Sialega said. “His mom tried to get him off the court, and he said, ‘No, I want to play one more!’”

Only two years into playing himself, Sialega told me he sees players between ages 8 and 80 play with each other: “It brings people together like no other sport I know of can.”

Tigers’ claw

The University of Missouri football team has had a harder time than usual winning on the gridiron this year, but the team in November helped defeat two of the university’s administrators. With racial tensions increasing on University of Missouri campuses, roughly half of the Missouri Tigers football team went on strike on Nov. 8.

With support from coaches and teammates, the players joined a group of students and faculty in demanding President Tim Wolfe resign over perceived indifference to reports of racist incidents this fall. One student went on a week-long hunger strike. Boycotts ended when Wolfe and his Columbia campus chancellor announced their resignations on Nov. 9. Forfeiting the Nov. 14 football game against Brigham Young reportedly would have cost the school $1 million. —A.B.