Story Behind the Name: Pickleball

When Niwot resident Carolyn Bradley steps onto the field of battle, she comes armed with strategy. Keep your opponents at the baseline. Get yourself and your partner to the net. Drop the ball low and tight just into the "kitchen." Stay focused.

"I'm realizing I don't hit it hard enough so the better players can put it away," Bradley admitted. "I have to improve that as well as my short game."

She was talking, of course, about pickleball, the wildly popular racket sport. "I always enjoyed tennis, and it's similar enough that I could pick it up pretty fast," she said.

Pickleball is now the fastest-growing sport in America, according to CBS News, National Public Radio, yahoo.com, Forbes...take your pick of news outlets. There's no argument here.

Bradley frequently plays on indoor courts at the Longmont Recreation Center, which hosts pickup games on weekdays. When the weather's better, she plays on reserved courts at Hover Acres Park in Longmont. "It's a great winter game," Bradley said. "I enjoy it and enjoy the people."

Bradley is a well-known Niwot artist. Her paintings are peaceful, bucolic, and in direct contrast with the killer instinct she's cultivating on the pickleball court. Okay, well, maybe "killer instinct" is a bit strong, since Bradley clearly appreciates the way most Boulder County players welcome all skill levels. "It's just a fun game," she said with a wide smile.

While Bradley knows plenty about pickleball, there's one critical bit of information that she and other accomplished players frequently get wrong. When asked how pickleball got its name, Bradley laughed and shared what she has been told by others who've been around the game longer.

"There were some people in Seattle whose kids were bored with tennis, so they started figuring out this shorter game," she explained. "And when the ball would go out of bounds their dog would get it. And their dog was named Pickles."

Now, wait just a second before you start sharing that tale at cocktail parties, because here is what USA Pickleball, the governing body for American pickleball, has to say on the matter.

It is true that pickleball was founded by a group of Washingtonians on Bainbridge Island, and that they were looking for a new outlet to entertain their kids. There was also a dog named Pickles, but it seems Pickles was late to the game. We know this because USA Pickleball did some sleuthing.

The following excerpt comes from the usapickleball.org website: "We looked for dog records, uncovered photos, and interviewed several people who were there from 1965-1970. Based on evidence, we learned that the dog was born in 1968-three years after pickleball was first played and named."

Aha! So Pickles the dog, while clearly a beloved, important, and reportedly overfed contributor to the sport, was not the reason pickleball got its name. "It is an undisputed fact that pickleball began, and was also named, in the summer of 1965 by Joan Pritchard," the website reports. Joan's husband Joel Pritchard was one of the game's inventors.

In the summer of '65, at the urging of bored family members, Joel Pritchard and a friend took a plastic perforated ball and a pair of ping pong paddles to a paved badminton court in the backyard. Within weeks, the net was brought to the ground, the paddles evolved into sturdier versions, and voila!...Pickleball was born.

Joan Pritchard was an alumnus of Marietta College in Ohio, which had one of the strongest crew programs in the country. Joan loved varsity crew competitions, and she often stayed for the races which came after hers. That's when the non-starters or "spare" racers would randomly pile into boats as a thrown-together crew to take each other on, just for fun. Those boats were called "pickle boats."

The Pritchards' son, Frank, is quoted on usapickleball.org when talking about his mother, saying, "She thought pickleball sort of threw bits of other games into the mix and decided that 'Pickle Ball' was an appropriate name."

Let's go a step further into our bonus round question! Pickleball has a zone near the net where the ball can't be volleyed. It's called the "kitchen." If a player is in the kitchen, he or she lets the ball bounce before hitting it or forfeits the point. Where did the term "kitchen" come from?

Bradley shared the prevailing theory. "The kitchen line could've come from shuffleboard," Bradley explained. If a shuffleboard player lands a puck in the kitchen, that player loses 10 points. "It might have been a transfer from that."

Story Behind the Name does not refute or condone that theory. It's a column for another time. Undaunted by that lack of confirmation, Bradley put forth another theory. "I think anybody who enjoys a racket sport would enjoy it."

Given the passion for pickleball in the Left Hand Valley and beyond, that idea seems to be a pretty good bet.