Pickleball at Seven in the Morning, X-Rays by Noon

By: Melody Rabor-Dizon

 

There is a sound in my neighborhood that did not exist five years ago. Flat, hollow, strangely cheerful. Pock. Pock. Pock. It starts around seven in the morning and it does not stop.
I walk past those courts on purpose now. Folding chairs along the fence. A cooler nobody was asked to bring. Six people in their sixties and seventies in matching shirts, arguing about a line call and laughing about it in the same breath. Somebody’s mother keeping score on a clipboard she laminated.
I have spent thirty years watching people, mostly in rooms they did not want to be in. This is the happiest crowd I have seen outside of a wedding. But there is another end to this game, and that end is mine, because I have also read the charts.
It started with three bored children Summer of 1965, Bainbridge Island, Washington, a ferry ride from Seattle. Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell came home from golf to find their children bored and saying so loudly. They went out to the old badminton court behind the house, could not find a full set of rackets, and improvised: ping-pong paddles, a perforated plastic ball, and a net they dropped to waist height once they saw how well the ball bounced on asphalt. Neighbor Barney McCallum joined the next weekend, and the three of them wrote the rules around one idea — it had to be fun for the whole family, with no advantage for being tall or young.
The name is a better story than the one you have heard. Most people will tell you it came from the family dog, Pickles. Charming, and backwards: the dog arrived three years after the game. Joan Pritchard borrowed the name from crew racing, where the pickle boat is the one thrown together from the rowers nobody picked. A sport stitched out of the leftovers of badminton, tennis, and ping-pong seemed to her to have earned it. The first permanent court went up in a neighbor’s backyard in 1967; today more than twenty million Americans play, which is how it ended up two blocks from my house.
Why I am rooting for all of it That laughing crowd may be getting more out of the morning than anything I can ask a provider to write on a prescription pad. Roughly one in three adults between fifty and eighty report feeling lonely, and loneliness is not simply a mood. It shows up in the heart, the brain, the memory.
People who play regularly report less loneliness, less isolation, more satisfaction with their lives, fewer symptoms of depression. The effect is strongest between about sixty-three and seventy-seven — exactly the crowd on those courts behind my house.
There is a brain benefit too. Tracking a ball, reading an opponent, changing your plan mid-swing: researchers call it open-skill exercise, and it gives the aging brain more than anything repetitive can. More than I can say for the elliptical you quit in 2019.
It is harder than it looks Small court. Light paddle. Plastic ball. That is the disguise. Underneath it the game is stop, start, twist, lunge, repeat — dozens of small sprints an hour. And nobody plays one game. It is always one more, and then it is four in the afternoon and you have been out since nine.
So drink before you are thirsty, especially if you take blood pressure or water pills. And know what means stop rather than slow down: chest pressure,
breathing that does not match the effort, dizziness, a cold sweat. That is not being out of shape. Sit down and get help. If you have been sedentary, or you carry heart or joint history, see your doctor before you join the league.
The moment I keep watching for Stand by that fence long enough and you will see it. Someone floats a soft ball high over an opponent’s head — a lob, the lazy arc that lands behind you and dares you to chase it. It is not hit hard. That is exactly why it fools people.
And a perfectly healthy man in his late sixties starts walking backwards. Chin up, eyes on the sky, arms out for balance he does not have. Everyone along the fence goes quiet for half a second. We know.
Here is what the emergency room data says. The average injured player is around sixty-four, most injuries land between sixty-five and eighty, and two out of three come from falls. Mostly fractures and sprains, and the wrist takes the worst of it, because when we fall we put a hand out.
Nobody falls forward. We go backwards, and we land on the wrist, the hip, or the back of the head. So turn your body and run, or let the ball go. No world ranking is on the line at the park district.
Let the ball win the point. Do not let it win your winter.
How to play so you do not get hurt Most of what I see is not bad luck. It is habit. Stay in ready position: knees soft, weight forward, paddle up in front of your chest. Flat-footed with the paddle hanging down turns every ball into a lunge, and lunges are what tear things.
Move your feet instead of reaching — small shuffle steps, never crossing your ankles. Stretch sideways with your feet planted and your shoulder and knee pay the bill.
Hit with your body, not just your arm. Rotate through the hips and shoulders on the serve and overhead; an all-arm swing with a flicking wrist is how you collect pickleball elbow and an unhappy rotator cuff. Check the paddle too — too heavy, or the grip too small, and your forearm compensates all season. And call mine or yours out loud, every time: net collisions are real.

Play the long game
If I could bottle whatever gets a seventy-year-old out of the house at eight in the morning to laugh with friends, I would hand it out at every visit. Let the lob go, and go home while it is still fun.
NURSE’S NOTES
♥ Let the lob go. Turn and run, or let it drop. Never backpedal, never dive.
♥ Wear court shoes. Running shoes go forward; this game goes sideways.
♥ Ready position. Knees soft, paddle up, shuffle to the ball. Do not reach.
♥ Say mine or yours. Out loud, every time. Wear eye protection at the net.
♥ Quit while it is fun. Most injuries happen on the tired one-more game. Hydrate early.
♥ Stop and get help for: Chest pressure, breathlessness, dizziness, cold sweat.

I will be the one by the fence, refusing to chase the lob. Take care out there. Melody Dizon, RN writes Health Matters for ViaTimes.