The paddle squarely connects with the neon orange ball, sending it sailing over the net.

“That’s right where the ball should go if you were playing tennis,” the instructor comments. The sixty-something former salesman grins, but the grin fades when she adds, “But not for pickleball.”

Five years after learning the game at a senior center, Christy Howden and Leslie White own an eight-court pickleball center—and are planning a new one with a dozen. | Photo: Mark Bialek

At the end of an hour-long introductory session, both the four learners and the instructor are drenched in sweat and smiles. “I’ve got to unlearn everything I know about tennis,” the retiree admits to his partner, a thirty-something mother of three. “I just retired, and I’m in the market for new activities to fill the hours I used to spend on my job.”

“I’m looking for a way to interact with anyone who doesn’t need a diaper changed or his meat cut up for him,” his partner retorts, grinning, as they leave the Wolverine Pickleball courts on a sultry summer day.

The retiree headed to his car, repeating the phrase his coach had intoned: “Bend your knees.”

Five years ago, Wolverine Pickleball cofounder Christy Howden was hearing similar advice. Howden and Leslie White, a friend she’d met while watching their daughters play volleyball, “decided to try pickleball and went to the senior center, where I was told I was too young to play! I had to purchase a senior-in-training card.

“They were extremely welcoming and taught Leslie and me how to play. We became hooked and wanted more pickleball play, more opportunities to teach others, and more competition.”

In 2018, the partners began teaching pickleball in Saline and Chelsea as part of the towns’ community education programs. From there, they expanded into renting the gyms and tennis courts at Saline High for tournaments involving 175 and more players from the area and even out of state.

Then, in the midst of the pandemic, the women rented half the former food-storage warehouse on Jackson Industrial Dr. “We DIY’ed it, removing what we didn’t need, painting, outlining the courts, and hanging the nets,” Howden says. They opened a four-court facility in October 2020.

“You sign up and jump into a foursome, generally of people you don’t know,” she explains. “Recently a pair of young athletes were teamed up with an eighty-nine and ninety-year-old—and the elderly man and woman beat the kids!”

This summer, the partners acquired the second half of the warehouse and expanded the facility to eight courts. Now, they’re finalizing site plan approval to build a twelve-court pickleball facility on Metty Dr., “with a beer/liquor bar, food truck facility, and shop,” Howden says, as well as bocce and sand volleyball courts. It will be one of the largest, dedicated indoor pickleball facilities in the Midwest when it opens next summer.

For those just learning, local pickleball aficionados Jackie Freeman and Karen Worthy recently published a picture-book primer entitled Bend Your Knees, Louise!

“I started playing in 2015, a few years after my husband died, when I was ready for something new and fun in my life,” says Freeman, who recently turned seventy. “I walked onto the court feeling some trepidation, but I saw friendly faces, and as soon as I had the paddle in my hand, I was hooked. It gets people out exercising and socializing and turns strangers into friends.”

Freeman points out that she was in school before Title IX was passed in 1972, prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools or other educational programs receiving federal funding. “Girls and women in my generation didn’t have the opportunities to try different sports then, like they do now. Now we’re getting a chance, and age isn’t a deterrent for pickleball.”

She calls herself a “recreational player who wants to get better”—and who wants to invite many others to the court. “That’s why Karen and I wrote the book,” which features a grandmother bringing her grandchildren to a court and teaching them how to play. Freeman is doing that herself with her own grandchildren.

The sport has even invaded the arts: Chelsea’s Purple Rose Theatre kicks off its thirty-second season on September 30 with Jeff Daniels’ play Pickleball. “In a wild comedy about America’s fastest growing sport,” the theater writes, “four below-average players must overcome their own limitations in order to achieve greatness in a game that has nothing to do with pickles.”

Daniels told an interviewer last year that the play was inspired by his wife Kathleen’s love of the game.