Game point.
She and her partner were victorious.
After learning to play the sport last September, Marsh and Denise DeMars were the duo to win the First Intergenerational Pickleball Tournament at the Boys and Girls Club Thursday afternoon.
“It was pretty easy to learn how to play, and it’s really fun,” Marsh said.
Pickleball, played with a paddle and plastic ball, combines elements of tennis and ping pong, which require the participants to volley the ball back and forth over a net.
During the past two months, a group of seniors from the Twin Lakes Recreational Center have been going to the Boys and Girls Club to teach the students how to play the game of pickleball. The lessons culminated with a competitive tournament.
“We wanted to educate the youth on how to play pickleball,” said Marsha Hankins, co-coordinator of the tournament. “The goal is to keep them interested.”
For the tournament, seniors paired with students from the Boys and Girls Club.
The First Intergenerational Pickleball tournament is a part of a larger initiative to promote and inform the community about the burgeoning sport of pickleball.
“Did you know that pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the country?” said Robert Schull, co-coordinator of the tournament.
Pickleball’s popularity in Bloomington began six years ago when a visitor from Arizona attended a senior volleyball program at the Twin Lakes Recreation Center and invited everyone to play the game, Schull said.
“It caught on immediately here in Bloomington and has grown steadily,” he said.
What started six years ago has grown into a sizable contingent of pickleball players. There is an email list of 75 people, and up to 30 people play regularly three to four times a week.
“It’s fairly easy to pick up,” Schull said. “It’s far less demanding than racquetball, and it’s a social sport.”
The growing popularity of pickleball prompted RCA Community Park to install two permanent pickleball courts in August 2014. Schull said RCA will be converting two more tennis courts into pickleball courts as well.
“The sport is bigger than tennis here in Bloomington,” Marsh said.
DeMars said she likes that pickleball requires a lot of skill, the speed of the game and that anyone of any age can play.
“You have to be physically fit,” Hankins said. “We love it. It’s in our blood.”
