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Ely Community Education

2023 Summer Pickleball Season

If you play pickleball come and join a great group of people and play the fastest-growing sport in the USA. Pickleball is played on a court that’s about 40 percent of the size of a regulation tennis court. Pickleball: a little bit like Ping-Pong, a little bit of badminton, a lot of momentum.  It's a fun fast-paced sport that allows you to engage in healthy exercise.  Players use wooden or composite rackets that are slightly larger than ping-pong paddles to hit a plastic ball back and forth over a net. The net is a few inches lower than a standard tennis net.

Due to the gym floor's flooding, the schools need the courts. The time is temporally changed to 9-1.

We have beginner classes from time to time please sign up for our interest in pickleball email registration.

A brief history of Pickleball

The game was invented in the 1960s by several parents vacationing in Bainbridge Island, Washington. The parents wanted their kids to do something outdoors instead of lying around inside all day (and this was long before video games and cellphones!

One house had a badminton court, so they grabbed a few ping-pong paddles, a plastic ball and made up the rules as they went along. The kids and the parents played all summer and then went home to Seattle, introducing the game to neighbors and friends.

There are two stories about how the game got its name. Some of the creators say they called it pickleball because a neighbor’s dog (named Pickles) kept running off with the balls. But Pickles’s owners say the dog came later. The game, they say, was named after a pickle boat, a crew term for a boat made up of spare rowers.

 

 


Class Details

Ely Public School's Court

Monday, May 8, 2023

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

 

8 a.m. –  1:00.

Cost: $35


About The Instructor

Ely Pickleball Club is the host for this class.  Annette Riley is the current President of the Ely Pickleball Club. Pickleball started with Mary Mills and Ely Community Education over a decade ago. For the first few years, the class was held on the top floor of the old Ely Community Center. Construction lights were set up to shed light on the "courts". Pickleball players and community ed united to raise the money to pave the old beat-up tennis courts at the school. The Ely Pickleball Club was formed and the organization quickly grew. Today's Pickleball Club has over a hundred members. The School District, Community Ed, and the Pickleball Club provided the money to resurface the School's courts in the summer of 2022. The Pickleball Club sponsors two scholarships every year. An annual college scholarship and a donation to Ely's School's annual Wolf Ridge trip for 6th graders.