Pickleball
| When : | Every second Friday |
| Time : | 2:30pm to 4:30pm |
| Where : | Hart Leisure Centre |
| Cost : | Approx £6.00 per session. Pay for each term up front |
| . | A "Watch and Play' trial session, £7.00 |
| Group leader : | Gary Glazerman |
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We now have an established Pickleball group within the Odiham and district u3a, which meets fortnightly at the Hart Leisure Centre (HLC), on Friday afternoons between 14:30 and 16:30.
"So, what", I hear you say, "is pickleball"? Well, it's a hybrid sport that combines the skills and agility of table tennis, tennis and badminton but without having to run around quite so much.
It's played on a badminton court with a net slightly lower than a tennis court net and it uses "Paddles" and air-flow balls. The Paddles have a short (5 inch) tennis racquet style handle attached to a double sided rectangular head (about 7 inches x 9 inches) and are typically made of a carbon fibre or polymer honeycomb core and carbon fibre or fibreglass hard playing surfaces. The airflow balls are hard plastic about the same size as a tennis ball.
Our group aims for inclusivity and enjoyment over out-and-out competitiveness so we play as doubles pairs, mixing up players with different abilities and switching partners between games.
We currently have around a dozen players who commit to play regularly but we can accommodate more as we have up to 4 courts available to us at the Hart Leisure Centre.
Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the USA, and it's starting to take off in the UK too.
If you've played some sort of racquet/bat/ball game before the concept is quite similar, although there are a few basic rules to learn.
So, if you want to give Pickleball a go we can offer a one-off "Watch and Play" session, where you'll be given basic instructions in the game and have the opportunity to play. The "Watch and Play" sessions cost £7, the fee covering the cost of court hire at the Hart Leisure Centre.
Afterwards, folk can decide if they want to continue playing on a regular basis - currently fortnightly but this could become weekly if there was enough interest - in which case you would pay for the remaining sessions of the term, on a pro-rated basis. This should work out at around £6 per session.
If you are interested in joining the group or in trying it in a one-off "Watch and Play" session, then contact the Group Leader, Gary Glazerman, using the "Click to send a message" button at the top right of this page.