MT. VERNON, Wash. — The pickleball craze has been gaining momentum lately and here in Washington, its birth place,  it is now the official state sport. In a bipartisan gesture this March, Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law Senate Bill 5615 while standing in the very court in which it was invented back in 1965 by former lieutenant governor and U.S. Representative Joel Pritchard. As a tennis player who has lived in Washington since 1962, I came to the party quite late. I wasn’t even aware of the sport until a friend introduced me to it last year. I am now thoroughly addicted!

I used to wonder what was going on when I would see four players standing on what looked like a tennis court but usually all close to the net obviously swinging paddles(!) at some sort of ball. Walking by, you might hear the high bright sound of the paddles striking a ball, which at a closer look is yellow, hollow with holes in it, and made of a hard plastic. Some say the game is like a hybrid of badminton (the standing close to the net), ping-pong (paddles and plastic balls), and tennis (serving the ball into a service box, a short net, volleying). I had to unlearn some of my tennis habits to get competitive and I still find myself out of position too often because tennis.

What turned the game from an occasional curiosity and into an obsession was my discovery of Skagit Valley Pickleball née Mount Vernon Pickleball Club, a local organization dedicated to advancing the sport here in our lovely Skagit. I recall walking by the new dedicated pickleball courts at Hillcrest Park (upon conversion, two tennis courts = six pickleball courts) where I saw folks playing, so I struck-up a conversation and learned that they had something called “open play” where you could just show-up and play in rotation with whoever else was there. If you were to head over to Hillcrest by the automobile entrance on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9 AM to 11 AM or Tuesday evenings from 6 to 8 PM, weather permitting, you will find a club member directing traffic and dozens of players of all levels waiting to play or engaged in playing. It’s a very social time with people standing about or sitting in their foldable chairs, chatting with courtside friends. Players self-organize into foursomes at the common skill levels (2.5+, 3.0+, 3.5+, 4.0+, with occasional higher level gods passing through) and an effort is always made to provide the newbie with some fun practice. Club membership is only $35 per year.

Until now, the only public pickleball courts in our part of the Skagit have been at Hillcrest and indoors at the Y. The Hillcrest courts are the result of the club’s successful fundraising efforts in 2020, raising the $42,000 needed to convert the old tennis courts. A gentleman by the name of Claude Blackburn was instrumental in getting that done and by asking a simple question, “What are we going to do next?” he put into motion the next and bigger project: the pavilion. As I write this in May, the pavilion is almost completed and we will be playing there by the time you read this. What is it? Simply amazing, that’s what! A state-of-the-art 25,000 square foot covered facility with ten professional fenced courts with tournament level lighting, perpetually dry, for year-round play. All that $1,700,000 can buy. This is a club that not only has a vision for what it wants to accomplish, it executes!

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