Pickleball, one of the fastest growing sports in North America, has soared in popularity with millions of players globally.
Some Montealers have picked up the sport as a hobby based on its physical and social elements. In Westmount Park, instructor Stephanie Friedman runs a pickleball program for the city of Westmount and teaches to people of all ages. She says it promotes a sense of community.
“It’s very easy to form a group and join a group as we have here, but the best part of it is how much joy, as people tell me, I’ve brought to their lives by introducing them to this sport,” she said.
Friedman, who also teaches at the Sylvan Adams YM-YWHA and the West-End Cavendish in Côte Saint-Luc, has been into extreme sports for decades, but six years ago, she discovered her passion for pickleball. She said she was involved in the snowboard business for decades and started in 1989 and knew it would one day become an Olympic sport.
She feels the same for pickleball.
“I think that it gives people a lot of confidence because if you don’t have to be athletic to take a pickleball, you really don’t have to have much,” she said. “You just have to be patient and be ready to learn a new sport and almost everyone can take it up and play at some level.
Invented in 1965 in the U.S. state of Washington by Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell, Pickleball is a mix of badminton, tennis and ping-pong. Friedman said the sport has become a global sensation, seeing regular clients ranging from 11 to 84 years old.
“Pickleball is a doubles game. Generally, it’s a lot of fun. It’s an 11-point game. The court is half the size of a tennis court. So it’s easier to advance quicker in the sport,” Friedman said.
Former and current students of Friedman have organized a weekly meetup to participate and create a sense of community.
Rima Maislin, a student of Friedman, said she recently picked up the sport and fell in love with it, adding that their group now comprises of 30 people who meet regularly.
“We meet a lot of new people that I’ve never met before even though we live in this community you don’t have a chance to meet all these people,” Maislin said.
“And now we’ve formed a group and whenever we want to play we post it online and we ask if anyone else wants to play.”
Another student, Sharon Bishin says the group has molded together and prior to discovering the sport, no one knew one another.
“We have a text chain of about 30 people at this point. The reason that we’ve come together is pickleball is exercise, but what this group has that is so unusual is that whichever four of us are playing together we encourage each other,” Bishin said.
Friedman and Bishin said they anticipate the sport to continue growing while building that sense of community and hope more will join on something positive and healthy.
“There’s just a really nice feeling of support and community among the players here.”