I'm not sure if anyone else can relate to this but as I’ve aged and began to focus on my career and family, my personal time for physical activity seemed to be one of the first “priorities“ that started to slip away. This was the case for me right around the age of 38 years old. I was your typical high school athlete and progressed into college with competitive sports and as I got older and started to settle down away from where I grew up, I realized there were fewer and fewer opportunities to jump into a competitive team sport.
Fast forward to 2015 when I found Pickleball. Originally my wife made fun of me because the first group I found that was open to having me play were retired players with an average age of about 65. They were living the dream! As I learned about the Pickleball community I started finding a variety of groups playing and eventually gravitated towards a group in Denver. We play with people of all skill levels in their 20s up through their 60s and everyone manages to be competitive on some level.
What I realized about this sport is that any age player can potentially be an amazing competitive individual. I have found that the older generations are very strategic and specific about where they will return the ball and they surprisingly have very quick hand speed and reaction time to make them deadly in the “kitchen” (inside the smash zone). On the flip side, the younger folks that we play against tend to drive the ball and make up for their inaccuracies in ball placement with freakish speed and amazing hustle.
Pickleball has been something that I have really enjoyed learning to play and I have found a community of competitors that fill my bucket with that competitive spirit and team atmosphere that I was missing into my 40s. This truly is a sport for all ages. I’m looking forward to my kids improving their game as we start to play more and more as a family. I highly recommend checking out the rules in court dimensions for the sport and start looking for a community of picklers near you.
Here’s a good resource for how to find games, players, and groups that are playing on different dates and times:
Here is a really good resource for pickleball rules and court dimensions:
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