Just so you know, there are no pickles in pickleball.

I learned that Monday at my first pickleball class at the Tempe Sports Complex, where all eight courts were filled and more players waited.

My friend Rhonda and cousin Theresa, both tennis players, wanted to try. Theresa, a retired PE teacher, taught pickleball but never played.

I’d read pickleball was popular among older people. How hard could it be?

But as I looked around, most people were younger than us, playing fast and hard.

“I’m not running suicides,” Rhonda muttered. “I’m too old for that.”

The coach didn’t make us do suicide sprints, but we ran, knees high, to the net and back.

Pickleball was invented in 1965 by three Washington dads. Accounts differ about the game’s name, but the favorite is it was named after one of the dad’s dog, “Pickles.”

Coach Ken told us it’s one of the fastest-growing sports in America. 

Pickleball is like tennis but played on a smaller court with a perforated plastic ball and paddles twice the size of ping-pong paddles.

You serve with an underhand swinging motion. So no impersonating Serena Williams.

The non-volley zone, 7 feet on each side of the net, is called “the kitchen” and prevents players from executing smashes too close to the net. 

“Stay out of the kitchen,” Coach Ken said.

“I can do that,” said Theresa, who doesn’t cook much.

Coach Ken urged me closer to the no-volley zone while my partner served.

“Be menacing,” he said. I growled. 

It was fun, and a good workout. An hour and a half later, we left the courts sweaty and tired, our quads already burning. Wait, older people do this?

“We are older people,” Theresa said. 

Rhonda got online to look for matching pickleball T-shirts. We’ll put our nicknames on the back.

Rhonda wants us to call her “Bread ‘n Butter.” Theresa will be “Sweet Gerkin.”

Oh, and me? “Big Dill.” Of course.

Reach Karina Bland at [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KarinaBland.

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