A new sport has been taking off in popularity around Charlotte. Players say it's more sweet than sour. For some, it's become their bread and butter, and a really big dill.
It's pickleball. Got it?
And players say once you get the taste in your mouth, you can't get it out.
"I teach people beginners now, and I tell them I feel like a drug dealer. It's your next addiction, just be careful," said pickleball player and local instructor Julie Smith with a smile.
Smith spoke, paddle in hand, beside the pickleball courts at Huntingtowne Farms Park in south Charlotte.
Around her, a dozen players shuffled back in forth, whacking whiffle balls over nets. Passersby might think they were playing scaled down tennis.
"The rules aren't the same as tennis, but if they played tennis, they automatically have a leg up on people like me who didn't play tennis," Smith said.
Unlike tennis, pickleball requires four players who use paddles instead of rackets. They play on a smaller court about the half the size of a regular tennis court.
More than 1,800 people have joined a local meetup group
Smith is one of many people who discovered the game just in the last few years. She heard about it from her breast cancer massage therapist.
"And I thought it sounded like the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of," she recalled.
But then she signed up for a class and found an online meetup group for pickleball players in Charlotte.
The group — Charlotte Pickleball — was created a year ago by friends Bryan Kalentek, a real estate agent, and Bonnie Servatius, a mortgage broker.
They started playing together during the pandemic as Servatius was looking for a new, fun way to exercise.
"I fell in love with it instantly. I mean, the calorie burn on the Apple Watch was like 500 after an hour, and I was laughing, and I thought — you know, it makes me feel like a kid again," Servatius said.
They found the game was easy to learn, easy on the body, and a good way to make new friends.
"And so he actually created the meetup group just to help me find people to play pickleball with," Servatius said with a laugh.
"I have meetup experience. I'll find some people," Kalentek said. "But I had no idea it would take off this quickly."
Since they started the group in January of 2022, more than 1,800 people have joined. The group now has meetups seven days a week.
"It's exploding, and I think it's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger," Servatius said.
"So we need more court. We need more courts built for sure. So that is our biggest challenge," Kalentek said.
Tennis courts still far outnumber pickleball courts in Mecklenburg County
Greg Clemmer, director of park operations in Mecklenburg County, says his staff has definitely noticed the ballooning interest in pickleball.
"Four or five years ago, I would say what is pickleball? And now I can say that I am very educated on pickleball," Clemmer said.
Since 2016, he said the county has been steadily converting some tennis courts to pickleball courts, and they're struggling to keep up with the demand.
"At first it was in certain areas of Charlotte where we started to get very busy with pickleball, and now we're seeing it in all the communities," Clemmer said.
The county now boasts 26 pickleball courts and 18 hybrid courts for tennis and pickleball. Players can reserve courts online, and the county still has more than 150 courts just for tennis.
Still, that hasn't stopped some tennis and pickleball players from battling for the same space.
"Park rangers get called and people get upset, and there's starting to be some territory wars when it comes to the court space in Charlotte," Servatius said. "And as the weather gets warmer, it's just going to explode even more."
She hopes the county will keep adding courts so there's room for everyone, because the best thing she's found about pickleball is the community.
Julie Smith, the local instructor, says she's made friends with people she'd never have met otherwise. She was once even asked to help a fellow player get to the hospital for an early morning surgery.
"I said sure. Then he called me back and said, the hospital needs to know your name because they are not accepting Julie Pickleball," she said with a laugh. "That's how we all have everything in our phones!"
She said the supportive community and the fun of playing keep her coming back — and that's something worth relishing.
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