A Brief History of the Game Pickleball
Pickleball is a game that’s just as fun to say as it is to play. This popular twist on a few classic games like badminton and tennis has been around for quite a few decades. In fact, pickleball continues to gain popularity today. While you’ve probably heard of pickleball before, you might not have heard its charming origin story. With the help of a brief history of the game pickleball, you’ll understand why this game continues to thrive all these years later.
The story of pickleball begins in the summer of 1965, in Bainbridge Island, Washington, to be exact. One particular afternoon, congressman Joel Pritchard and businessman Bill Bell were arriving home, only to discover that their families were sitting around, bored out of their minds. Remember, this was before Netflix, Twitter, and Xbox Live, so entertainment choices were a bit slimmer than they are today.
Bell and Pritchard’s search for entertainment took them to an old badminton court on the property. The only problem is that there was a lack of badminton equipment, so they had to get creative. Then, Bell and Pritchard began tweaking the rules of badminton by adjusting the net differently and using equipment like ping pong paddles and a wiffle ball.
Over the course of the weekend, the two families were testing their new game and adjusting the rules as they went along. One week later, Barney McCallum was visiting the property when Bell and Pritchard chose to introduce him to this new game.
With McCallum on their team, the trio began smoothing out the rules to make pickleball equally challenging and fun for the whole family. Two years later, the first-ever permanent pickleball court came to fruition. Thus, pickleball was born and spread across the United States so fast that by 1990, all 50 states had residents playing this charming racquet sport.
Now that you’ve gone through a brief history of the game pickleball, you can finally try it out for yourself. Once you gather all the necessary pickleball equipment, you and your family can take part in this beloved game. Given that summer is about to arrive, as is pickleball’s 55th anniversary, now is the perfect time to get outside and give this fun activity a shot.
