While amid Spring sports and rainy weather, a new sport sprouts into Nixa High School: Pickleball.
Head boys basketball and girls tennis coach Brock Blansit said he hopes that the event will grow school-wide as it continues.
“This was the first year we started the Pickleball doubles tournament,” Blansit said. “Hopefully we have more kids each year, so Pickleball is something that we plan on playing for the next several years, and hopefully it keeps growing.”
This year, 18 students came out to participate and compete in the tournament. Skill levels differed within the group of 18 kids, but Blansit saw overall growth from all.
“Pickleball is like a lot of other sports, the more you practice the more you get better. I would say most of the kids had played Pickleball quite a bit, so we didn’t have too many beginners but there were a couple.”
Freshman Brady Richart and Evan Brett won the tournament; Richart enjoyed the activity and plans to continue.
“I’ll play it if they have it again because it was really fun and I like playing Pickleball. But yeah, it’s pretty fun,” said Richart.
With any sport comes adversity, imperfections, and bumps along the road to success. Pickleball was a way that revealed these lessons to Richart and his teammate.
“We did not do much to prepare for the tournament, we played together a lot but we knew how to play with each other already,” said Richart. “I played pretty bad the first couple of days. … It’s funny because we had a hard workout in track and then we went and played. We thought we were gonna get smoked but we ended up winning.”
Pickleball is a unique sport that has its own unique rules and nuances, but it does draw similarities to other sports in terms of rules and team chemistry.
“I coached and played tennis in high school, there’s a lot of similarities in both sports.” Blansit said. “The biggest difference is the court size and the rackets are a lot smaller as well, but a lot of the rules are very similar to tennis.”
Richart said pickleball is a different experience for him.
“The other sports I play require a lot of running and jumping but I feel like it’s more just two people, track is a single sport and basketball is five people. It’s you two and you can’t really get mad at each other or else the whole team kind of collapses in. You’re not really touching the ball too, you are just hitting it,” said Richart.
The qualities that pickleball provides for students at Nixa High School are hard to match when comparing it to other sports. It brings a friendly environment that still maintains a competitive aspect that many enjoy, it’s open for all no matter the skill level, and is relatively simple
“Some people don’t play other sports like football, baseball, basketball stuff like that, but anyone can play pickleball. You don’t have to necessarily be athletic or anything, it’s just really fun and you can do it with anyone you want,” said Richart.
Pickleball is a less competitive than typical team sports.
“Intramurals is fun for kids that don’t play maybe in a traditional sport, its something more for fun after school, you know. … It’s something that we hope will continue to grow,” said Blansit.
