PHOTOS COURTESY OF PICKLE-BALL INC.
PICKLEBALL
50
In the world of sports, there are very
few games that have evolved from such an
amalgam of unrelated things as pickleball.
Credited to State Representative Joel
Pritchard (who also represented the
Washington state in Congress from 1973
through 1985 before becoming the state’s
lieutenant governor, a position he held until
his death in 1997), pickleball started off as a
way to pass the time on a boring, rainy Seattle
afternoon.
During the summer of 1966, Joel Pritchard
and his best friend, Bill Bell, were returning
home late from a morning of golf, having
promised their children they would come back
early to their summer homes on Bainbridge
Island and find some things to do that would
be interesting to them. When they arrived
YEARS
IN THE
MAKING
and found the children upset with them, Joel
stated that when he was young, kids made
up their own games. As a result, he promised
he could make up something new that they
would enjoy.
Attempting to set up a game of badminton
on a home court, Pritchard and Bell could not
find the shuttlecock. Not to be deterred, the
friends searched a nearby shed for anything
they could play with. They retrieved some
plywood, and Joel drew the pictures of two
paddles. They then cut out the paddles and
headed for a store to buy the perfect ball for
the game. They tried everything, but not
finding an answer.
Along came a young neighbor, Dick Greene,
who was carrying a plastic bat and a whiffle
ball. The inventors asked to borrow the whiffle
ball and found it was perfect for hitting over
the net, which Pritchard had lowered from 60"
to a hip height of either 36" or 28" (depending
on the version told).
Soon after, they introduced the game to
friend Barney McCallum and neighbor Dick
Brown. McCallum, Pritchard and Bell wrote
down the first official rules of the game.
Barney McCallum is the last surviving
member of that trio of inventors. Now in his
80s, he remembers the early days well. With
less than three months left of summer on the
island where Pritchard’s vacation home was
located, people quickly adopted the game.
McCallum said, “We started playing this
game in July and August. Labor Day closes
a lot of things up, and that’s what happened
with pickleball.”
Continued »
JANUARY 2016 |
MAGAZINE
15