A non-athlete finds her game
(Originally published April 2023)
You might not know it to look at me, but I’m appallingly uncoordinated.
If Mark is, say, working outside on a ladder and asks me to throw him a tape measure, we both know I am unlikely to get it within his arm’s reach. Instead, I’ll wing it into his ankle bone or somehow huck it straight up in the air and have to duck and cover to avoid getting beaned with it.
For our safety, I usually just stand at the bottom of the ladder and let him meet me halfway.
In daily life, I hide my awkwardness well enough. But I have to be honest: I can barely swing my arms properly when I walk without whispering “left, right, left, right.”
As you might expect, I’m terrible at sports. And that is why I was so pleased to have found one I may actually be decent at: pickleball.
Until a couple of weeks ago, my impression of pickleball was that it was like tennis played on a smaller court. I had heard it was “an activity even old people can do,” but I can now report that it’s also an activity even unathletic people can do.
“I was the sole player with two healthy knees, an advantage I hoped would make up for my preschooler’s level of hand-eye coordination.”
Friends of ours have a grown son who tried pickleball and took to it, even after he and a friend got thumped by a pair of genial but ruthless 80-year-old women. He taught it to his parents, and they in turn took us to the rec park on a sunny Saturday afternoon to teach it to us.
Now that I’ve spent a little time on the pickleball court, I’d compare it less to a scaled-down version of tennis and more to a larger version of ping-pong, where the table is the court and players use oversized paddles to hit a heavy Wiffle ball back and forth.
Our foursome ranged in age from 55 to 60. Of our collective eight knees, two had recently been replaced, two had recently been deemed candidates for replacement and one had recently been repaired. I was the sole player with two healthy knees, an advantage I hoped would make up for my preschooler’s level of hand-eye coordination.
With the diminutive court and slower ball, the game required less speed than tennis, and it was easier to get a volley going. To me, that meant more fun and more chances to return a serve, a new and exciting concept for me.
The basic rules were simple. Only the serving order left me baffled, as it was handled differently than what I recall from tennis, ping-pong, or volleyball. I was just happy to be told when it was my turn to serve and let someone else keep score.
The game was surprisingly enjoyable and manageable, although I attribute a lot of that to our friends, who chose not to humiliate us as we attempted to pick up the fundamentals. Maybe next time they won’t be so gentle, but in that case I’ll intimidate them by being the only person on the court who can execute deep squats without wincing.
I don’t know if such relaxed good humor is a normal part of the game, but I appreciated it. In my experience with sports, I am accustomed to opponents and teammates alike rolling their eyes the moment a ball comes near me (probably because of the way I flinch).
Here’s the thing: Despite being a confirmed nonathlete, I played sports all through high school. It wasn’t because I wanted to or because my skills were in demand, but because I attended a school where athletics were thrust upon us, like it or not. We were told it was good for the body and mind and a way to build character.
If it builds character to consistently let your team down because of your inability to understand the gist of any particular sport, whether playing JV soccer, JV softball, or even thirds tennis, then yes, that’s what I got out of sports: lots of character.
So being able to hold my own on the pickleball court gave me an unfamiliar sense of physical competence—and even a hint as to why some people seem to genuinely enjoy sports. We laughed, we got a little exercise, and I even scored a few points.
I went to work the next week eager to tell my coworkers that I had discovered a new activity. But to my dismay, they responded with groans and cackles. One even laughed and said, “Playing pickleball is like telling the world your athletic days are over.”
Well, the joke’s on her: I’ve never had an athletic day in my life.
