When I returned to Bloomington last fall, I joined a group chat my friends set up for coordinating pickleball games. I arrived with a starter paddle, some balls and expectations of picking up the game quickly.
I’m decent at tennis and occasionally good at ping-pong, so I figured I’d be alright at pickleball, a sport that seemed like a cross between the two.
As it turns out, I was not good at pickleball. In fact, I was bad at it. I hit the ball like I was playing with a tennis racket and held the paddle like it was ping-pong. Pickleball, it seems, is a separate sport, and I had no experience with it.
Nine months later, I think I’ve improved to “very mediocre,” which still leaves room to grow. I’d love to make it to “decent” someday.
Nine months later, I have little to no idea when the ball can or can’t be in the kitchen, despite my friends explaining it to me multiple times. I either don’t follow through on my swings (and the ball doesn’t make it over the net), or hit the ball too hard (sending it outside the court).
Maybe I’m just playing with a group of people who are good at pickleball, making me look bad by comparison. But that doesn’t matter, because the result is the same: announcing to whichever poor soul is my partner — in a very cheerful voice — that I’m a liability.
For example, in one game I played early on, we were 0-9 at one point and it was most certainly because of me, seeing as my partner was a very good pickleball player. After all, not only do you need to keep your opponents from scoring (which I wasn’t doing well), you yourself need to score (which I also wasn’t doing well).
In one of the last games I played, my friend and I gave our opponents a run for their money, coming back from a 6-2 deficit, but it was because he was carrying the match. I would serve and earn us no points, then he would serve and earn us multiple points.
As someone who’s not only a recovering perfectionist but also generally very quick to pick up new information or skills, pickleball frustrates me. When someone gives me much-needed advice on how to improve, it feels like my stomach curls up in shame. If that sounds dramatic, it’s because it is. Still, it’s my gut-level reaction. I wanted to be good at pickleball from the get-go, but I’m not.
Turns out, that’s a good thing. The fact that I’m quite mediocre is a reason to keep playing, and not because my main goal is to get better.
Don’t get me wrong — I do want to be a better pickleball player and stop bringing my partners down, but what’s more important to me is that I get comfortable with inadequacy. There’s always going to be something that I’m not good at and that I could improve on. That’s just a given. In the end, it’s more effective to spend time on the things that matter to me than just trying to be good at everything.
It’s also helping me be humbler. I care too much about impressing people. I feel frustrated when I can’t pick something up as quickly as I’m used to. I think I’m hot stuff, but that bubble gets popped by all my misdirected shots during a match.
I’m learning to let go of what other people may or may not be thinking about me and to just play pickleball. It turns out I don’t have to be a professional pickleball player like Anna Leigh Waters to have fun with my friends. I just have to show up and give it the old college try.
