Keeping What's Important About Sport

The ritual of sportsmanship after a pickleball match. Touching paddles. Where is our game headed? Where is your game of softball, track, and swimming headed? Photo courtesy US Senior Pickleball.

 

By Ray Glier

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.____
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher

 

Karen Parrish, the managing director of events for US Senior Pickleball, said her organization strives to preserve the equilibrium of the game for the almost 20 million people who played pickleball in 2024. 

What does that look like? Maybe this. It is fun balanced with unneurotic competitiveness.

The ordinary.

But when Karen told me US Senior Pickleball had created a pathway to a national championship tournament this year, I thought, “Here we go again. People playing sports hunting the extraordinary of medals and fame.”

I saw youth baseball and basketball and college football metastasize into this money-grubbing machine when the stakes included everything with the word “national.” Local rec leagues struggled because “travel ball” squads had to have priority to get to these "national" events and so it was gobbling up field and court time for tournaments.  

My check-in with Parrish is one reason Geezer Jock exists, not just for pickleball, but for Geezer Jocks swimming, walking, biking, playing softball. When monied interests see an opportunity they start innocently and then smother those downstream.

This is a warning to Geezer Jocks: keep your radar up around your sport.

That's the headline here.

Our sport, pickleball, is over-wrought at the top by the hype of TV and money and professionalism. Then there are the community feuds that have made pickleball a neighborhood menace because of the incessant paddle-to-ball noise that comes with countless tournaments. The tournaments are an opportunity to make money for someone.

Parrish turned down the noise and rancor for me. 

“We are senior focused and amateur driven,” Karen said of US Senior Pickleball. “So we don't have tournaments that offer prize money to our players. We have very competitive tournaments, and we also have recreational events, but we're not an event company or a pro tour that offers prize money.”

I needed to hear that because in a community close to you somebody is scheming to make money from our Mom-and-Pop game.

“We have some incredible 5-0 rated players in US Senior Pickleball, but the backbone of our organization are the grassroots programs and our ambassador program,” Parrish said. “They work with different courts and communities all over the country and work to provide recreational time for just playing the game for fun.”

I didn’t think Pickleball might start to fade in popularity because it grew too fast. I thought it would fade because a stigma of competitiveness and expensive gear would chase people 60 years old + back to golf, bowling, walking, etc.

Rampant ambition can make Hell of Heaven.

No way this is happening, said Parrish. US Senior Pickleball's version of the sport is growing, she insists, because all skill levels are welcome.

“We’re still providing the avenue and the portal for our seniors to stay active and just being out there having fun, whether it's recreationally, or in a competitive tournament,” Karen said. “I see that we're going to continue to grow pickleball in the senior divisions because they just want to continue to have fun. It's all about camaraderie and making new friends.”

I told Parrish about senior pickleball players, who are quite good, entering tournaments with a lower self-rating so they can hoard medals and acclaim. Sometimes it is an innocent miscalculation of their skill. Sometimes it is ambition gone too far.

“People are going to sandbag and it's because a lot of these players are new, they are just coming in, they don't have an official rating, and so they play in a low bracket just to see how they compete,” Karen said. “And then usually a tournament director will say, ‘hey, this player is playing below the ratings. Can you take a look at it?’

“They send it to me. I take a look at the tournament history, and if it is warranted, that they're playing well below their skill level, I will adjust.”

I can somewhat see the need for the national championship pathway US Senior Pickleball is adopting. Some people want to gauge their improvement because, let’s face it, becoming more skilled at something can make it more fun. They also want in on the excitement of a tournament far away. 

The strivers will have their chance to show how far they have come in Holly Hills, Fla., Dec. 5-8 at the 2025 US Senior Pickleball Championships.

But just remember this one example of all that is good with pickleball and a reason for its being.

It was a comment from a caller to the National Public Radio show 1A on July 1, which was exploring the cause and solutions for adult loneliness. 

“When my kids all moved out of the house and we became empty nesters, I was worried that I wouldn't have anybody to go do fun things with anymore. Not that my husband's not great, he is. But I discovered pickleball and I just wanted to throw that out there because now I have so many friends.

“I'm in several group chats about where do we play? When can you be there? And it's so fun and it's easy to learn. Go do pickleball if you're lonely.”

We have come out of the Era of Zoom and still have people burdened by the lack of a “third space” or that space that is not “home” or “work.”

This woman found pickleball, a game created by older people for older people. 

It’s ok others are in on our fun. Just don’t let them steal it.