If someone were to ask you what’s the fastest-growing sport in America, what would your answer be? If you answered pickleball, congratulations, you must be a blast at trivia night. And if you think that pickleball involves throwing a pickle across the kitchen table, then you must be a different kind of blast at trivia night.
In all seriousness, if you haven’t heard of the game played with paddles and a perforated ball, you aren’t alone. When Taylor Taylor, founder of PickleMania, first heard of the game, she says, “I laughed. I thought it was the weirdest sounding thing.” Taylor played tennis professionally for 20 years until, after a few knee surgeries, her doctor told her to stop. “I was sort of freaking out. Like, oh gosh, what am I gonna do now? I’ve been doing this since I was 10 years old.”
Fortunately, a friend pushed her to start playing pickleball. Though she was hesitant at first, Taylor says, “I was just hooked from the first day. … Then I started thinking about what I wanted to do for the second half of my life. I have a master’s in clinical social work. I had written my thesis … about teaching life lessons through sport.
“I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, oh my gosh, pickleball is the perfect sport because it’s so easy. The learning curve is very small compared to something like tennis. … I always say, nothing is sore in my body when I play pickleball except for my face because I’ve been smiling the entire time, even when I’m getting my booty kicked.”
Out of this idea came the nonprofit PickleMania, which teaches pickleball to under-resourced kids while implementing a curriculum of social-emotional learning, based on adverse-childhood-experience research. So far, the program has been implemented in three Universal Parenting Places. And, since the pandemic, the organization has painted more than 30 pickleball courts in driveways, and it hopes to work in charter schools during this summer for kids in summer school. The organization also offers pickleball lessons outside of its nonprofit efforts. Basically, “The people who can pay for lessons pay for the people who can’t.”
To raise more money, PickleMania is hosting a pickleball tournament in a round-robin style in partnership with Church Health on March 26th. That Friday, there will be an exhibition and pro-am featuring professional player Kyle Yates. Tickets for one or both of the days can be purchased at picklemania.org/events.
Pickle & Party, Memphis Hunt & Polo Club, 650 S. Shady Grove, Friday, March 25, 5-8 p.m. | Saturday, March 26, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
