Pickleball continued from page 9 strong they are, how athletic they are — and you can still have a really good time and play.” It doesn’t cost much to try, either. Forty dollars and an Amazon search will get begin- ners four wooden paddles and eight balls. Many players took up pickleball during the pandemic, including Nelson, who says it’s been a great way to safely build com- munity outdoors. Hermann Li, who is sometimes called the commissioner because of his organi- zational efforts in Congress Park, started playing pickle- ball there in July 2020 because racquetball courts, which he’d frequented, were closed by CO- VID concerns. At fi rst he was hesitant to make the switch. “All my racquetball friends were playing pickleball, and I was holding out,” he says. “‘I don’t want to play that sport. It’s not a sport. I mean, it’s a game for old folks.’ That’s what I thought.” He was wrong. From the retirement home to Congress Park Kim Copeland fi rst played pickleball twenty years ago at her mother’s retirement com- munity in Florida. She’d just had a baby, and her mom told her to go play pickleball while she watched her grandchild. Copeland remembers think- ing that she didn’t want to play a game with a stupid name with strangers she didn’t know, but her mother insisted — and Copeland is glad she did. She says she had “the best time” with three retired men who helped her pick up the game in just ten minutes. That experience mirrors what she sees at community centers now, with experienced players teaching novices and everyone enjoying themselves. “You may play with somebody ten times better than you, and then the next time you’ll play with somebody that you’re twice as good as,” she says. “And you’re laughing.” Tamar Arbeli, a Denver resident who owns a pickleball apparel line called Super Fly Goods and often plays at Congress Park, had a similar experience when she took up the game. “Even if you don’t hit the ball, you’re still smiling,” she says. She and her family started out playing with older retirees in the mountain community of EagleVail during the lockdown. “Then we came to Denver,” she recalls, “and we were like, ‘Oh, we’re the older people that play.’ Pickleball, I feel like, has been kind of a staple in older communities for quite some time. Post-pandemic, and maybe even a little bit pre-pandemic, it really picked up in younger communities.” Arbeli attributes this shift to the scene becoming more social. Matthew Crance, who lives right by Con- 10 gress Park, didn’t know what pickleball was when the courts were fi rst installed about a half-dozen years ago. But when he began seeing people play, it looked like so much fun that he had to investigate. Crance gathered some neighbors and they started playing. Since then, he’s watched the pick- leball community grow into the congenial crowd it is today. “People are hanging out, enjoying their evening, meeting friends — and part of that growth was really fueled during the pan- demic, when you couldn’t go do anything,” he says. “It’s outside, and it’s somewhere where you can actually go socialize with people, which we were all dying to do.” What makes Congress Park different, ac- cording to Arbeli, is a community that’s both Crance and Altreuter started a pickleball apparel company called Spicy Pickleball that sells T-shirts, mugs and stickers. Along with pickleball-themed items like Miami Vice-style shirts that say “Pickle is my vice,” Spicy Pickle- ball has Congress Park-specifi c merchandise. Altreuter works in the graphic-arts indus- try; when he saw that there wasn’t much fun pickleball gear, he decided to design some. The two enjoyed brainstorming early looks, lighting several pickleball items on fi re to try to get the silhouette right for apparel with fl ame designs. “It started as kind of just a jokey thing, but now it’s really grown,” Copeland and Swern always wanted to go into business together but didn’t know exactly what they wanted to do. Swern, 62, couldn’t participate in the sports she once did because of injuries; after some of her friends invited her to play pickleball this past spring, she was hooked. She and Copeland started a group that communicated by texting, but after that became too cumbersome, Swern suggested Facebook. Eventually, they hope to transform the Facebook group into a business that reaches every state, but they say that their goal will always be community and inclusivity, as Susan Swern is the co-founder of the Lavender Pickleball Club; Gates Tennis Center hosted the Pro Pickleball Tour this year. active and welcoming. Instead of having to fi rst fi nd enough people to fi ll a court, anyone can head to Congress Park and rotate in to play some games. She credits Li with help- ing to create the paddle-stacking system at the park that ensures that people get a turn to play, remembering a time before he got involved when there wasn’t much organiza- tion at the park’s four courts. In this system, players make columns of four paddles in the chain-link loops of the fence, reserving their spot with their paddle. Each column represents a game to be played; individuals can easily hop in. When Li hosted a barbecue at the park over Memorial Day, there were six or seven rows of people wait- ing for courts to free up. Congress Park regulars have a running joke that describes the courts as “the tough- est courts you’ll ever love,” and have even invented the “dead spot drop shot” because of dead spots on the courts’ surface. But they say they wouldn’t play anywhere else because of the community. Picklers are so commit- ted to Congress Park that someone from the neighborhood shovels the courts whenever it snows so that people can keep playing. Denver City Councilman Chris Herndon started playing pickleball during the pan- demic. “It’s a great sport as we’re coming out of this pandemic to kind of get to know one another,” he says. He plays all around the city and the suburbs but frequents Congress Park because “it’s always fun when you go to Congress Park.” Crance says. “Every time you go over to [Congress Park], you see somebody is wear- ing something Spicy Pickleball, and it’s cool to see the community support.” The Congress Park version is the most popular of all the designs, Altreuter notes, because people want to represent the com- munity if they play in other cities. He himself has played all around the country, and even on vacation in Mexico. While preparing for a recent family trip to Arizona, the fi rst thing he researched was the location of the pickleball courts. When people do the same for Denver, he says, they tend to end up at Congress Park. One player from Rhode Island got dropped off at Congress Park straight from the airport. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I gotta get in a couple games before I go to this convention. My boss doesn’t land for another couple hours,’” Altreuter recalls. Although Congress Park has become a city hub, it doesn’t have Denver’s only pickleball courts. The Denver Department of Parks and Recreation has installed pickleball courts at seven parks, with plans to add courts at two more within the year. Facilities in such suburbs as Arvada and Littleton attract many players, and Gates Tennis Center in Cherry Creek now has eight courts, after creating four in 2017 and adding four more this year. “The friendliest pickleball club on the planet” One group growing as quickly as pickle- ball itself is the Lavender Pickleball Club. Started by Copeland and longtime friend Susan Swern on July 14, the club already has 600 members on Facebook. promised in their slogan: “More than pick- leball friends — we’re family.” Swern says she believes the group has grown so fast because it serves the niche of LGBTQ+ people who want to get into pickleball, and also because it’s mission-oriented, focusing on sustainability. “It’s particularly geared toward the LG- BTQ+ and allies community, but not with a heavy hand,” Swern explains. “We welcome anybody. But I do think that people who come know that it’s a welcoming, inclusive, diverse space in every way, including abil- ity, gender expression, orientation, level of athleticism, previous experience.” The only requirement is that a member needs to be over eighteen. That inclusivity, combined with the focus on sustainability, is why the members collectively call themselves the “friendliest pickleball club on the planet”: They’re friendly to people and to the Earth. Swern thinks it’s been important during the pandemic that the club offers a space for the city’s lesbian community to come together that isn’t a bar, though she does appreciate those places. “It was sort of just like the perfect storm where, build it and of course they’re going to come! Because it fi lled a need inside of people — not just for the athleticism, but a yearning to really connect because we were so isolated,” she says. “What better kind of community-building could you ever want to envision for yourself?” Members of the group organize drop-in play at various locations in the metro area, including Gates, the Northfield Athletic Complex and Superior Autrey Park. The club hosted its fi rst tournament in October in Arvada. Both at Congress Park and through the Lav- ender Pickleball Club, continued on page 12 DECEMBER 2-8, 2021 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com LAVENDER PICKLEBALL CLUB GATES TENNIS CENTER
