Video: Woodbury Pickleballers

Pickleball started in Woodbury less than two years ago as an offshoot of games in Bloomington and Edina, according to Woodbury resident Jim Propes.

"It has grown steadily and we have over 80 players on our club membership and we get lots of drop-ins from other local games," he wrote in an email to Patch.

Propes said the group is lucky to have the support of the Woodbury Parks and Recreation Department, which initially put up pickleball courts at , where two sets of pickleball lines were overlaid on the two tennis courts.

This month the city added six dedicated pickleball courts at , where teams played on Monday. Propes, an ambassador with the USA Pickleball Association, says it is the largest dedicated pickleball site in the state.

He provided some history on pickleball for Woodbury Patch.

1965

After playing golf one Saturday during the summer of 1965, Joel Pritchard, congressman from Washington State, and Bill Bell, a businessman, returned to Pritchard’s home on Bainbridge Island, WA, to find their families sitting around with nothing to do.

The property had an old badminton court so Pritchard and Bell looked for some badminton equipment and could not find a full set of rackets. They improvised, cutting shafts of the damaged rackets and found a perforated plastic ball. The rackets didn’t work very well, so they created four wood paddles, similar to today’s wood paddles.

At first they placed the net at badminton height of 60 inches and volleyed the ball over the net. As the weekend progressed, the players found that the ball bounced well on the asphalt surface and soon the net was lowered to 36 inches.

The following weekend, Barney McCallum was introduced to the game at Pritchard’s home. Soon, the three men created rules, relying heavily on badminton. They kept in mind the original purpose, which was to provide a game that the whole family could play together.

The Pritchards had a cocker spaniel named Pickles, who became interested in this new game. Whenever a ball would come his way, he would take the ball and run off with it—it was Pickle’s ball, and that is how the game got its name.

1967

The first permanent pickleball court was constructed in Joel Pritchard’s backyard in Seattle during the winter of 1967.

1972

A corporation was formed to protect the creation of this new sport.

1975

The National Observer published an article about pickleball followed by a 1976 article in Tennis magazine about “America’s newest racquet sport.”

1976

During the spring of 1976, the first known pickleball tournament in the world was held at South Center Athletic Club in Tukwila, WA. David Lester won men’s singles and Steve Paranto placed second. Many of the participants were college tennis players who knew very little about pickleball. In fact, they practiced with large wood paddles and a softball-sized whiffle ball.

1984

The USAPA “was organized to perpetuate the growth and advancement of pickleball on a national level.”

The first rulebook was published in March 1984. The first executive director and president of USAPA was Sid Williams who served from 1984 to 1998. He was followed by Frank Candelario, who kept things going until 2004.

1984

The first composite paddle was made by Arlen Paranto, a Boeing Industrial Engineer. He used the fiberglass/nomex honeycomb panels that commercial airlines use for their floors and part of the airplane’s structural system. Arlen made about 1,000 paddles from fiberglass/honeycomb core and graphite/honeycomb core materials until he sold the company to Frank Candelario.

1990

By 1990, pickleball was being played in all 50 states.

2003

Pickleball was included for the first time in the Huntsman World Senior Games, held each year in St. George, Utah, during October. Pickleball is now the fastest growing sport in the U.S. and the fastest growing by far for the 50-plus age group. It is being considered as a demo sport in the next Olympics.

Today there are over 3,000 pIckleball courts in the U.S., by the end of the year that will be 4,000 and estimates are there are well over 200,000 players.