{"id":28969,"date":"2017-06-19T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/pickleball-station-opens-in-kent\/"},"modified":"2017-06-19T11:48:02","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T18:48:02","slug":"pickleball-station-opens-in-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/pickleball-station-opens-in-kent\/","title":{"rendered":"Pickleball Station opens in Kent | VIDEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xqw6nB32MMc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Getting into a pickle is now much easier and more fun in Kent.<\/p>\n<p>Pickleball Central opened the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pickleballstation.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pickleball Station<\/a> last Saturday at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/@47.4017502,-122.250715,17z\" target=\"_blank\">22330 68th Ave. <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/@47.4017502,-122.250715,17z\" target=\"_blank\">S.<\/a> The facility offers indoor courts open to the public, along with lessons and a pro shop featuring paddles, balls and apparel.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday the four courts were busy with pickleball players at all levels, from professionals to beginners.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Pickleball Central press release the Pacific Northwest is the &ldquo;birthplace of pickleball,&rdquo; but until Pickleball Station opened there were no &ldquo;dedicated indoor court facilities in the Seattle area.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Karen Thomas, director of marketing and communications for Pickleball Central, said the sport attracts all levels of players. Thomas was a competitive tennis player who became interested in pickleball and is now an enthusiastic and dedicated player. She showed her skills Saturday playing in a doubles match with Takako Tourangeau, also a top player.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas said the game was invented on Bainbridge Island in 1965 by Congressman Joel Pritchard, Barney McCallum and Bill Bell. She said the three were &ldquo;looking for a game for their kids beside badminton.&rdquo; Pritchard and his friends came up with pickleball, and suddenly the adults were playing with the kids.<\/p>\n<p>From Bainbridge Island in 1965, pickleball took off and is now the fastest growing sport in the U.S. Thomas said it has topped more than 2.4 million players.<\/p>\n<p>She said she took up the game because tennis was becoming too stressful on her body.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;As you get older tennis is hard on your body,&rdquo; Thomas said. &ldquo;And it can be complicated to orchestrate a game. You often have to belong to an expensive club.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>At first when she heard of pickleball she thought it wouldn&rsquo;t be competitive enough or give her enough of a workout.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;After playing the first time for two hours I was working up a good sweat,&rdquo; she said.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most appealing aspects of the game according to Thomas is the friendly culture.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;With pickleball I can show up and have a group who want to play,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy to find people to play with and talk with; it&rsquo;s a very social game and it&rsquo;s easy to engage people.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>One reason Thomas thinks there is a friendly culture in pickleball is the court is smaller than tennis, 20 feet-by-44 feet.<\/p>\n<p>The USA Pickleball Association describes the sport on its website as combining &ldquo;many elements of tennis, badminton and ping pong.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>It is played indoors and outdoors on a &ldquo;badminton-sized court and a slightly modified tennis net.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The sports uses a paddle and plastic balls with holes and is played with singles or doubles matches.<\/p>\n<p>Pickleball Station is featuring the Northwest Invitational on July 1.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas said a select group of professionals and 5.0 ranked players (the top rank under professional) have been invited. Kyle Yates, the top male professional pickleball player, will be at the invitational.<\/p>\n<p>Pickleball has caught on with all age groups and athletic abilities. Thomas said the reason is the sport is &ldquo;easy to pick up. There is a quicker learning curve than tennis.&rdquo; Ping pong players often pick the sport up quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><ins class=\"neEmbed\" data-eid=\"76519\">www.youtube.com<\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":28970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28969"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}