Members of the Tellico Village Pickleball Club paid a visit to North Middle School last week to teach the sport to the next generation.
“I reached out to them,” Marci Joy, NMS physical education teacher, said. “We played pickleball here, just a modified game of it. I knew it was really big in their community, so I just emailed them, and we went back and fourth trying to set that up. They were here all day. It ended up being about 13 of them volunteer their time and were here all day.”
Terry Pearcy, a club member who volunteered, said she thought it was a good opportunity for the club.
“I’ve had 30 years of teaching under my belt, although science and not phys ed,” Pearcy said. “But it sounded like a fun thing to do, and we wanted to excite the kids into understanding pickleball and maybe wanting to play it in their future.”
Jeff Dore, Pickleball Club president, said reaching out and teaching the sport to a younger audience was important as the popularity of pickleball continues to grow.
“Pickleball is growing so much in America, where traditionally it’s been for retired people and people that can’t move as quickly on the tennis courts,” Dore said. “But when you go to one of these tournaments and everything, you see a lot of younger people, teenagers and everybody, taking up the sport. So we just felt it was important to get out to the schools to do some education on what pickleball really is, and this is the second year we’ve done it.”
Joy said she tries to introduce her students to a variety of activities that they can enjoy throughout their entire lives, and pickleball is one that fits that bill.
Pearcy agreed.
“I feel that the skills involved in it are not to the extreme that it inhibits anybody, whether they be young or old, into playing,” Pearcy said. “Also, I find that women and men can compete on an even level. You don’t have to have a lot of force in your hit. You can position the shot well, and it just makes it kind of a nice sport for anybody, any gender and any age, to participate in. It doesn’t take a lot of stamina, so even people our age are really enjoying it in Tellico Village.”
Pearcy said the students took to the sport and to the volunteers who taught it.
“They had a ball,” she said about the students. “They were so enthusiastic when we arrived, and after we were done showing them — in the brief time we had with each class — many of them came up and thanked us for coming and asked if we were coming back. I think they really kind of got into the feel of the game. Although we couldn’t teach them a lot in the 40 minutes we were there (with each class), it got them involved enough that they felt, I think, that they wanted to try playing it in the future.”
Dore said that pickleball is a family sport in that it’s not hard to pick up on a basic level and that it is ideal for families.
Joy said because of communal aspects of the sport, she hopes students share their enthusiasm for the game with family members.
“Pickleball, they can always modify it, and it’s very inexpensive,” Joy said. “Everybody that day was able to participate. Nobody was left out. And they would do some one-on-one with them if somebody was struggling, and showed them some things they can do at home and with their family.”
Pearcy said as the Tellico Village club continues to grow she expects to see more young people and more families involved.
“We even have two young people, one 16 years old and one a little older — maybe late high school age — that actually joined our club in the Village while they were living with their parents here,” she said. “It seems to be a sport that’s taking off. We originally, around 2005, had 17 people playing it. Now we have over 450 members in our pickleball club.”
