by Tom Timmermann

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One of the toughest parts about being really good at pickleball is admitting that you’re really good at pickleball.

“It’s not something I’m confident doing, telling people I play,” said Zac Shook, a 29-year-old pharmacy tech from South County and one of the top local players. “The name is kind of wacky and (the game is) known for old people playing it. I’m younger-ish and when I tell people that, they think I’m beating up on old people. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

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“I come into class on Monday,” said Amy Schachner, a 32-year-old high school math teacher from Crestwood and Shook’s partner on their highly successful mixed doubles team, “and my students ask if I played pickleball over the weekend, and I do get eyerolls. … I definitely get a lot of people thinking it’s ridiculous because of the name.”

Pickleball, for the uninitiated, is one of the fastest growing sports around, a mashup of tennis, table tennis and badminton, with a whiffle ball (but no pickles) thrown in. It started in popularity with senior citizens and has spread down to Gen Xers and millennials. Because of the limited ground to cover — most points play out with the players standing about seven feet from the net — and the relative slowness of the ball, it’s a sport in which older players can take on younger players on a reasonably even basis, especially because the preferred form of the sport is doubles rather than singles.

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“I have lost to older people, and I’m OK saying that,” Shook said. “I lose to older people all the time.”

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On the rise

According to Mike Chapin, who runs StLouisPickleball.com and is a zealous ambassador for the sport, the number of pickleball players in the area has grown from around 100 to more than 2,000 over the past six years. Pickleball courts are popping up in parks and recreation centers around the region — the stadium at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center in Forest Park is now set up for pickleball rather than tennis — and if this were a time when more people were hanging around at parks and recreation centers, you would probably see someone playing. With portable nets, a park with four tennis courts can have eight pickleball courts.

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The sport, which dates from 1965, drew its unfortunate name because its creation from spare sporting parts led the creator’s wife to say it reminded her of a pickle boat in crew, which consists of rowers left over from other boats. Either that or because the family dog was named Pickles.

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The sport’s newness has meant that the rise to the top of the game doesn’t necessarily take a long time and years of practice. Shook has been playing about five years and before that never had taken part in organized sports above the rec level. Schachner has been playing two years-plus, though before that she played tennis, table tennis and volleyball. But without much experience, they quickly teamed to be a formidable pairing.

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“They play not only very athletic,” said Chapin, a career advisor at Washington University when not working as sort of a Johnny Pickleseed, “they can stretch and be able to hit balls that would typically be behind people past people. They do very good job playing with anticipation and can turn from a defensive situation where you think you have won to an offensive position where they win the point. They cover the court well, hit hard shots, stop shots and are able to anticipate.”

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Catching on quickly

Schachner had two chances to pick up the game, once as a child and once in college, and passed both times. Finally, as an adult, she was invited to play with some friends and that time it stuck. Two months after taking up the game, she won her first tournament, and she has gradually moved her way up through the levels of the game and has kept winning.

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“I think I got really lucky with the people I started playing with,” said Schachner, who feels her volleyball background — she’s a coach at Jefferson High — was good preparation for digging out low shots, “and after that, I knew I was having fun right away. These people had been playing for a while, were helping me with my shots and were saying, ‘You’re going to be good at this.’ So I kept going. It’s so easy to pick up. You can have fun the first time you get out there.”

When school isn’t session, she plays about 20 hours of pickleball a week.

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Shook was working out at the YMCA in Festus when someone at the front desk talked him into playing.

“I thought it was a stupid name for a sport but it looked like fun so I tried it and liked it,” he said. “I was horrible at the start. Terrible. I had no paddle background, so I relied on my athleticism. I still do. My progression took off in the past couple of years.”

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Not long after Schachner started, Shook saw her play, thought they would make a good on-court pair and the two quickly became a mixed doubles machine.

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“I feel I always know what he’s going to do and where to go,” Schachner said. “He moves around a lot and is pretty aggressive. If he jumps in front, I move behind him to fill in. We have worked on it quite a bit, last winter started drilling more, working on strategies for us as a team. … We’re both pretty quick. Even if we’re scrambling on defense, we’re confident we can get back into the point. It’s fun to play that way, to get back up there and win a point. We have similar styles, but he’s more aggressive. I have to be the more patient one.”

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Shook has no idea how many times they’ve won because he doesn’t keep the medals they receive (“We’ve won a decent number,” he said), but in October, he and Schachner won the highest level mixed doubles event at the Gherkinball pickleball tournament (the game ultimately doesn’t take itself too seriously) at Innsbrook, the latest in a growing list of wins and strong finishes for the duo.

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“I like the strategy, I like the aspect of exercise, I like the social aspect too,” Shook said. “I’ve met a lot of friends through it, people I talk to on a consistent basis, of all different ages. You don’t see that in other sports.”

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And that’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

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