Dinking around is good: Pickleball tournament marks spot in Sacramento’s sports world
To the passerby at Rusch Community Park in Citrus Heights, it looked like any other hot summer day. The sun bore down with little reprieve. Beach towels and lawn chairs were spread out everywhere on the grass.
But between the sounds of kids doing cannonballs at the nearby public pool, there was a constant thwacking noise that emanated from the park’s 12 perfectly manicured pickleball courts.
Nancy Vaughn and her partner Joan Cardinet were in the middle of a fierce rally. Pickleball is similar to any other racket sport: Play until your opponent can no longer successfully return a shot.
So Vaughn chased everything down. Drop shot close to the net? She’s charged up first. A lob overhead? She turned on a dime and hits a no-looker. A smash shot that might be out of bounds by an inch? She’s not taking that risk.
The rally ended with Vaughn bailing her opponent out by reaching for a wide shot; Cardinet took a moment to reel her back in. “I’ll let you know when it’s your ball to get,” she assured her partner.
Usually, they play at Rusch for fun. Last weekend, they worked to be gold medalists at The Sacramento Open, the first-ever tournament sanctioned by USA Pickleball.
Rusch isn’t the only place for a legit game in town. There are, of course, tournaments across Sacramento’s many public and private pickleball clubs, and the sport has quietly gained steam up and down the West Coast for decades.
Vaughn, who recently retired, really doesn’t care for those things. It’s not why she plays.
“I just love playing, especially on a day like this,” Vaughn said. “I’m just looking to come out here and have a good time.”
She is like many people around her on the courts, a sort of born-again athlete who caught the bug. She started playing at Eastern Oak Park in Carmichael after a friend recommended the sport to her and has competed in several local tournaments since. Although she doesn’t obsess over things like her player rating, she’ll hardly ever turn her friends down when they invite her out for a “dink” — a pickleball term for a short touch shot or volley.
“If my knees would let me play every day, I would,” she said.
Filling a Gap
Sitting underneath a shaded tree, Jason Meyer helped keep score on a notepad for the tournament organizer, who opted to get on the court himself. He discovered the game five years ago when he lived in San Bruno and started to play seriously when he moved to Roseville at the onset of the pandemic.
“It’s a great community,” Meyer said. “Pickleball in general is just a very friendly sport, especially for new people.”
“The (pickleball) community is just growing and growing out here. With all of these places in Sacramento now having a couple of courts, you can go almost anywhere and literally find a game at all normal hours of the day.”
He said that his goal is to one day coach pickleball full-time, and to do so requires that he be a skilled professional player himself. Before last weekend, Meyer had traveled as far as Florida and South Carolina in order to play in USAP-sanctioned tournaments, where his scores are logged into a database and his ranking independently certified.
“Your play really sets the tone of whether or not people are going to want to take lessons from you,” he added. “If you’re not playing at a successful or high-enough level, it’s going to be a tough sell to get people to sign up.”
“I don’t know if you can make a full living (teaching) yet, but it’s definitely a possibility some day.”
Meyer filled in on scorekeeping because the Sac Open is a one-man show. That man was John Gill, 60, who is originally from Sydney, Australia, but now splits his time between Oregon and Los Angeles. Before becoming one of pickleball’s latest evangelists, he competed in martial arts and tennis for over 45 years.
“One day, my body started to have a bit of chat with me and my friend suggested I start looking into this new game,” Gill said. “I thought, well that’s a funny name. But once I tried it, I thought it was absolutely amazing. I think it’s the best game ever. It’s just more fun, filled with laughs and great people. I just got totally involved in it.”
He said that he’d like to keep professionalizing the sport, which remains relatively decentralized in the Sacramento area. His hopes are to open up more avenues for people like Meyer to play professionally and make pickleball an Olympic sport by the time it makes it to his home country in 2032.
“What I love about the sport is that anyone can play with anybody at any level,” he said. “It’s not like in tennis where you can get blasted off the court.”
To that point, of the 72 players that registered for the tournament, only J.P. Shinar III was a minor. He is 11 years old and has been playing pickleball longer than some of his opponents. His parents drove him down to Sacramento from nearby Chico so that he could compete in men’s singles and mixed doubles. He said that his goal is to go pro one day and get sponsored.
“I’ve never actually played against any kids before,” Shinar said. “I’ve usually just been playing with adults.”
Finding one’s tribe
The game of pickleball is said to have been invented at a summer home in Bainbridge Island in Washington in 1965. That is what Thuy Joseph said. Joseph traveled to Sacramento all the way from Boise, Idaho for the tournament.
She discovered the game four years ago when she stopped playing tennis and shyly admitted that she is addicted.
“I play too much,” she said with a laugh. “It’s everyday now.”
“I want to play for as long as I can. … I have friends who are now in their 70s and 80s who are still very good and can still get to every ball. They inspire me and I hope to look like that when I’m that age.”
These days, now that her husband is retired and they travel a lot, Joseph takes her paddles with her everywhere she goes.
“When you travel, it immediately becomes something you have in common with some locals,” she said. “It breaks the ice. You play them and have wonderful conversations. I love it.”
Vickie Onesti, who moved to Sacramento from Chicago in 2018 agreed. She grew up playing racquetball indoors because it was always so cold in her hometown.
“I had absolutely no friends when I came out here and now (through pickleball) I have the best girlfriends,” Onesti said. “If nothing else, this is an opportunity to get to know people in your community, have fun, competitive games, and then go out for beers or something afterwards.”
This story was originally published June 23, 2022 at 12:00 AM.