Pickleball is a sport that's easy to learn, fun to play and offers both physical and social benefits. On this episode of Growing Destinations, pickleball enthusiasts, Suzanne Bretto, President of the Rochester Area Pickleball Association, Vino Raj, Co-founder of To Pickleball And Beyond and Blake Held, Co-host of the Inside Out Pickleball podcast detail their pickleball journey and how they are helping others in their communities engage with the sport.
Rochester Area Pickleball Association
Inside Out Pickleball Podcast
To Pickleball and Beyond
Rochester Pickleball Classic - October 14, 2023
Experience Rochester, MN
Pickleball is a sport that's easy to learn, fun to play and offers both physical and social benefits. On this episode of Growing Destinations, pickleball enthusiasts, Suzanne Bretto, President of the Rochester Area Pickleball Association, Vino Raj, Co-founder of To Pickleball And Beyond and Blake Held, Co-host of the Inside Out Pickleball podcast detail their pickleball journey and how they are helping others in their communities engage with the sport.
Rochester Area Pickleball Association
Inside Out Pickleball Podcast
To Pickleball and Beyond
Rochester Pickleball Classic - October 14, 2023
Experience Rochester, MN
The Growing Destinations podcast is brought to you by Experience Rochester. Learn more about Minnesota's third largest city, which is home to Mayo Clinic and features wonderful recreational and entertainment opportunities, by visiting experiencerochestermncom.
Speaker 2:Pickleball can be whatever you want it to be. If you want it to be the most competitive thing that you just go down the rabbit hole in that and there's professional tournaments, you can get to. I mean, you can get to be a professional pickleball player or you can get to be. I just want to go play and dink around a little bit on a Sunday morning.
Speaker 3:We came out of this COVID pandemic where you were in social isolation, and here you come into a very inclusive, low barrier to entry, physically, like you know it's not taxing as something like tennis or something like that, but you still have that equal amount of fun.
Speaker 4:You can learn how to play pickleball in less than an hour, and we, you know we can teach you how to play from start to finish, how to hold the paddle, how to, you know, get them up to the kitchen line, how to dink, how to score, in an hour's time. And in that hour's time you can also play three or four games with three people you've never met before.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast, where we take a deep dive into destination development and focus on a wide range of topics, from tourism and entertainment to economic development and entrepreneurism and much more. I'm your host, bill Vaughn-Bank. We're on location at the Eagles Club in Rochester, minnesota, home to some of the newest pickleball courts in the city. Today, I'm joined by some leaders in the pickleball community in southeast Minnesota. Suzanne Brettow is president of the Rochester Area Pickleball Association. Bino Raj is co-founder of To Pickleball and Beyond. Blake Held is co-host of a new podcast Inside Out Pickleball. Suzanne, vino and Blake. Welcome to the Growing Destinations podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you Bill.
Speaker 1:As pickleball enthusiasts. What attracted you to the sport, Suzanne?
Speaker 4:To be honest, what attracted me to the sport was the loud pop, pop, pop sounding balls. When I was driving down Second Street one day in Rochester, I had no concept of what pickleball was back in actually 2017. And I drove by a tennis court that had been converted into what I didn't even know what this game was. I stopped to check it out and there were all these people just playing with this wiffle ball and I stopped and inquired and it was a lesson, and they said come on and try it. And I was hooked from day one. So that's exactly what it was. It was the sound of a pickleball driving down the road that got me into the parking lot of Cook Park.
Speaker 2:Blake, how about?
Speaker 1:you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean kind of in the same round. So I played pickleball a little bit when I was a little bit younger high school, middle school. I was a huge golfer growing up so there was that always competitive nature in me and for me it was one of those. You know, I'm a dad now I got a guy who's one year old now it's hard to get out and play golf for four or five hours at a time. So I saw pickleball. I was like, hey, pickleball, is this growing sport again? I'd love to get back into it. I played once with our local community Ed and the community same kind of thing. They said oh, come on down play with us, it'll be a great time. And ever since then fell right back into love with the game again. I got to bring that competitive nature back into it. So for me I don't need six hours to go play, I can go play for an hour at a time and it's just a good, good, good way to be active again.
Speaker 1:You know what attracted you to pickleball.
Speaker 3:So do you want the long version of the short version?
Speaker 1:Go ahead we've got a little time, yes, so the very first time I heard pickleball.
Speaker 3:It was really a coincidental encounter and I thought it was a joke because I actually come from a different sport. I've come from cricket. I played professionally. I played club level outside the country so I actually tore my shoulder when I was playing in Africa. So I was actually the director of informatics down at Alina Health. So I had gone for an auto visit and the physician we had this conversation and was leaving out he's like hey, you should check out pickleball, you really like it. I thought he was joking, walked out of the door, never thought about pickleball again. The next time I think I kind of encountered pickleball is like I'd gone for a meeting at the YMCA and see this old group of people and they were saying hey, it's pickleball. I thought about it again.
Speaker 3:My big encounter with pickleball was in Rochester and Susanne was involved with this. So my best friend from high school had a stroke in 2018. And he doesn't take care of his health at all. I'm a medical professional and that really hit me. He's my best friend. I've known him all my life. I've always looked for something that'll get him active. So when I moved to Rochester, I'd heard about this pickle ball. It's like, hey, let me reach out and see what this is all about. And actually I was in a church parking lot on Sunday evening. I got this number. I found Susan online, called her. She's like you should come try it. I was like, okay, let's go give it a shot. Right, I really want to find something interesting and just fell in love with, like, the social network. How welcoming it was. Long story short, like last year, we started pickle ball in Pine Island with four people Just north of Rochester.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, with four people now we're up to 300 plus in Pine Island. Wow, the big story about this for me was Jay, my best friend. He started playing pickle ball last year. He has lost close to 35 pounds, so, wow, that was my big thing.
Speaker 1:A hell of a benefit.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and that's how I really got into this and kept on moving forward and see how I can help more people with it.
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 4:I have to interject quick because when I met, you know, on the pickle ball court, I swear he had already played for years because he was a ringer. He was already a ringer. A ringer, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:Well, Suzanne, you're president of the Rochester Area Pickle Ball Association. When did this association form and why?
Speaker 4:So just a little history. I'm actually the fourth president of Rochester Area Pickle Ball, also affectionately known as RAPPA, and I dug into the history of pickle ball in Rochester and it turns out it goes back to 2008, when our very first president had taken a trip to Florida and it was all the craze back in 2008 in Florida. So she brought it back here and some of her friends four to six of her friends were playing back in 2008. Fast forward to 2010,. This small group of people convinced Park and Rec to paint lines on Goose Egg Park and Cook Park, which were tennis courts at the time, dilapidated tennis courts. Fast forward to 2012,. This group is growing in numbers and maybe there's 15 or 20 of them. They got permission to use the Rec Center on Broadway in the lower level, the gym there, for three courts.
Speaker 4:And then, between 2012 and 2015, the interest in pickle ball amongst the friends had grown exponentially and there was 40 or 50 people and they said, hey, we need to collaborate and join together and become something more than just a bunch of friends. There's so many other people that would enjoy all the benefits of pickle ball. So they started an LLC, a 501C3, called Rochester Pickle Ball Association and between 2012 and 2015, they petitioned the Park and Rec to change the layout of Cook Park from two dilapidated tennis courts to six pickle ball courts. So that was our initiation into the pickle ball realm of having actual destination courts to go play at. So in 2017, there was 180 members. By 2019, there were 300 members, fast forward to 223, we have almost 900 members that actually pay an association fee of a nominal amount to be a part of ladders, leagues, all sorts of fun type of events and friendships that you've met along the way, which are priceless.
Speaker 1:Significant growth and I, looking at the title or looking at the name, the word area means that it's not just specific to Rochester right.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, absolutely. And all three of us actually live in small towns outside of Rochester which is kind of funny and ironic and we all play in different areas, not always in Rochester, actually not most of the time in Rochester.
Speaker 1:Blake, you've taken your passion for pickle ball to the airwaves and you and a couple other guys host a podcast. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Live to co-host Dan Taylor and Jackson Pelzer, and kind of the same time that I kind of got back into pickle ball. Probably going on a year now we've been doing this and we all kind of got involved in our local community Ed. We all live in kind of the same area and we started in community Ed. It was in this winter, I remember last year it's negative two degrees outside. You're running into the gym to get your gym time in, you're cramped, you're trying to get as many courses as you can in that thing and we just all fell head over heels. Love with pickle ball again.
Speaker 2:We couldn't wait for every Wednesday to go back and play and we kind of after every single time they would turn the lights off, they'd kick us out of the place. We're like we're not done yet, we wanna keep going. And we kind of talked about like hey, I mean I've done a couple of podcasts before this. I kind of brought it up to their group and I kind of pushed a little bit more than I should have and I said I wanna do a podcast and I wanna do a ball pickle ball. And you know, both of them were kind of I don't know about that, you know, and I'm like and I wanna do it on YouTube, so I wanna do some video too. And then it was more of I don't know about that and the rest history, right.
Speaker 2:So our show Inside Out, pickle Ball, we're mainly YouTube. You can find us on any podcast where you go get in your podcast and really we focus on everything about pickle ball. We kind of talk about our own journey, coming back into it, kind of how we find games, how we go and actually every single week how we're getting better, some tips. We kind of let people know what's going on.
Speaker 1:Kind of the real world of pickle ball yeah.
Speaker 2:Vino. He talks about paddles a lot Like if we do a paddle review on our show. It's like, yeah, this feels good. You know, I can't tell you the specifics on it, I can't tell you anything more than that. But we kind of reserve that for more of the professionals. For us, like we don't cover professional circuit all the time and we don't cover the APP, we don't do all that. We just we want everybody who's trying to get into pickle ball to kind of see how we've gotten into it Relatable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we try to be, you know, and it just we kind of start our show at the beginning of the night and how we think it's going to go, and next thing, you know, we're off on a tangent and so for us it's kind of just a little love project. We have a ton of fun with it. You know, we're growing subscribers every week and I think where it stops, who knows, but we're having a ton of fun with it.
Speaker 1:It's a fun podcast to listen to inside out pickle ball. We will link to it when we post this podcast. Vino, you and your wife co-founded to Pickleball and Beyond I love the name Bringing your knowledge and resources to the public. Share with us more about your business.
Speaker 3:This was something out of a necessity. Again, going back to Pine Island Pickleball, bunch of us just got together and started playing the sport that I come in. I am very finicky about my bats. Every little ounce makes a huge difference. And when we started playing I want to try different battles. I really wanted to, but you know the cost of this, right, it can go all the way up to $333. So I was talking with Stephanie and it's like hey, I want to try these different things. At the same time, when I was playing, there was a lot of older folks coming and playing in Pine Island and the way they were holding themselves. I was telling Stephanie it's really scary because they've got fundamentals right, but they can hurt themselves.
Speaker 3:So one thing led to another. Someone challenged me hey, come and help teach. Okay. I thought, okay, I'll just come and do it, just to help out. And then they were like hey, we really like this. Then I realized to teach you need to get your certification and have insurance.
Speaker 3:So one thing built another. You know we started doing classes. At the same time I had reached out to a couple of companies and say would you let us try paddles? Someone like, no, you have to buy 10, 15 to get I'm gonna deal a distributor, right. And then a friend of mine up in Minneapolis said hey, start doing videos and they'll start sending you paddles. So that's how, like, the whole reviewing thing started. And that's all.
Speaker 3:Stephanie, she's the one that, like, does the recording. Stephanie, your wife, my wife is Stephanie and she's the one that does all the editing and everything like that. So all kudos go to her. I really have a lot of respect for her because I have a full-time job, I'm working on my PhD and I have three kids little one. So finding times are really hard thing, and last year we had started going for some events up in the Twin Cities and no mentioning names, there was this one event that I went to. They were really having a hard time. They didn't know what was happening, everything was on paper. And she was like shall we go help them? I was like, okay, fine, we'll go and offer whatever, and like within, like about it?
Speaker 3:I'm a director over informatics and I build research programs, so organizing naturally comes to me. I was like, okay, let's do it this way, you do it this way, send these people to this course. And everyone's like, why don't you do this? Like, okay, we'll think about that later. Come this year we helped with ship shots, a couple of events and stuff like that and like, okay, we'll see where we'll take this.
Speaker 3:But I think for me the big difference was I can't sell for crap. Someone says, hey, give me a paddle, I'll just give it. And Ryan, like a very good friend that we play with, met him at a rapper at Cook Park. He's like, hey, why don't we think of building something with this and how can we slowly grow? And so Ryan I think Ryan Sweeney is the third part of Two Pickle Ball and Beyond he was very instrumental. He started with us in February Like let's get some paddles. It does not a huge margin, but we can always sell less than MSRP and kind of get it out to the public. So it was like this lessons, events and helping people get pickle ball and so it started very small. This year we have started doing a lot more reviews and getting more paddles, and so initially we had to reach out to people saying, hey, can we get a paddle to review?
Speaker 1:Now people are reaching out and saying yes, can you review it for us, so we're having floodgates. There's a lot of data out there on pickle balls explosive growth, especially over the past five years. It's become the fastest growing sport in America year over year. Why has it become so popular, Suzanne?
Speaker 4:Gosh, I could give you 10 different reasons, but the first thing I think of is you can learn how to play pickle ball in less than an hour, and we can teach you how to play from start to finish, how to hold the paddle, how to get them up to the kitchen line, how to dink, how to score in an hour's time. And in that hour's time you can also play three or four games with three people you've never met before. And so that's the second point of it is this inclusivity of you don't need to know anybody. In a lot of these cases, you can travel anywhere in the country and just drop into what they call open play slash rec time. You don't know a single person. We have something called a paddle saddle where you put your paddle in and, before you know it, you've played with 25 different people in the morning and you've potentially made friendships with them, learned about.
Speaker 4:if you come to Med City, whatever medical condition you're here for, we have so many visitors that come from all over the country and they come to Cook Park, put their paddle in the paddle saddle play from nine to 11, and then they go to treatment. So there's just this camaraderie of everyone wants to play and meet you and become your friend and we all want to get better together. We all want to laugh together. Those are the two big points for me why I feel like it's growing exponentially.
Speaker 1:Blake, you said it was infectious almost from the first time you played. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I mean I'll echo a little bit with Suzanne's that I think it's just it's so approachable, it's so much fun from the start and you pickleball can be whatever you want it to be If you want it to be the most competitive thing, that you've just go down the rabbit hole in that. And you there's professional tournaments you can get to. I mean, you can get to be a professional pickleball player or you can get to be I just want to go play and dink around a little bit on a Sunday morning and you can also play with those people who have those different attitudes where you can play with that five oh player who wants to play professional tournaments, or you can go play with somebody who's played twice and you can still have fun doing that. And I think that's why there's just this low barrier to entry and anybody can do it and in any capacity they want to.
Speaker 1:You know what's popularity? Will it trickle down to your children? Oh, definitely.
Speaker 3:I'm my, my daughter, eight years old, she's already won, she's she's turning eight and she wants to go to a tournament with me, and I think that's the other thing right, like various age can get together and play. It's very inclusive. And for me, one of the touching stories was like down in Pine Island two people had gone for a tournament, this elderly gentleman with this young kid. And I think timing also is a big thing, right. We came out of this COVID pandemic where you were in social isolation, and here you come into a very inclusive, low barrier to entry, like you know it's not taxing as something like tennis or something like that, but you still have that equal amount of fun.
Speaker 3:And it's longer fun, give what I mean. So get my friend to go and work out. 15 minutes will not happen. He'll play three hours, four hours, saturday morning pickleball. I mean you're getting more right. So I think I think all of that kind of adds up.
Speaker 4:There's a couple other things too. I was hearing these two talk the cost to play. I mean, you can. You can play for virtually nothing. I mean, between a paddle that Fina will sell you for under $150 and you know three pickleballs you can play all month long for that. Typically, there's no court fee like there is for other sports, and it's just so economical to play. And again it, there's no age barrier at all. There's tournaments where you have to be 25 years age difference to play together. Like okay, your partner has to be 60 and you have to be 35 or whatever the difference is in the age. So they're encouraging that age differential.
Speaker 1:Earlier you mentioned a rating and I I imagine that this sport is getting more competitive, professional and just like USTA, where you can get ratings 3.0, 3.5, et cetera, et cetera. Are you seeing that with this sport, is it really starting to also become one where it gets to be more professional and and there's the opportunity to make some money?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'll start with it and I think that's one thing that we've talked about in our podcasts a little bit. Right, like you know, one thing coming into the sport of pickleball is you hear about these stupid ratings or how you get that rating, and it's one of those that I mean, unless you're playing some sanctioned events or you're doing, you don't necessarily have that number. So that's one thing that we've kind of talked about in our show a little bit is like how do you know what you are when it comes to some of those ratings? Because, again, when it comes to some of that money, there's a lot of tournaments out there that you want to go play a tournament and you want to pay that entry fee, but I don't know where to enter because I don't want to come into this tournament and say I'm a 3.5. Next thing you know I'm not a 3.5. I'm a 2.5.
Speaker 4:You're for sure a 3.5. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Taking from the president.
Speaker 4:I'll take it.
Speaker 2:So I think there's definitely money there and I think you know and Suzanne can talk to more of the price kind of behind duper ratings and getting duper sanctioned events or not. But it really just for me it's one of those that I know there's ratings there. It's just the barrier to that sometimes is almost hard because you don't know what you are.
Speaker 3:I think it's in its infancy, it's getting there, these algorithms. That's going to take time and it's always this misconception that if you have a lot of data you're going to get a lot of information Bad data in, bad data out right, so it's garbage in, garbage out. So I think it's going to take a little bit of time to kind of resolve and kind of get these ratings working properly, getting these algorithms working properly. And also, I think when you build a rating system based on professionals, where the variance is less, it's very hard to kind of conceptualize and put that same thing into rec play, and I think that's where the big struggle is. But in the last two years that I have experienced it it has significantly improved and I think it's just giving it time and I think it's going to get there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think I read an article where they're trying to make it an Olympic sport in 2030. That's not too far away.
Speaker 3:It's really close, isn't it Like they need?
Speaker 4:two more countries, two countries, I think.
Speaker 3:They need 74. We had 72 countries, and then you automatically qualified. Yeah, so almost that.
Speaker 1:It's crazy. Let's dive a little bit deeper into the benefits of pickleball. We've already talked a little bit about it from the social standpoint and, vino, you talked about it from the health standpoint. How significant are both of those together? I mean, you've got a friend who just lost 30 some pounds and you talk about this being such an accessible and social activity. It's got to be good for the country.
Speaker 3:Coming from a health perspective, one thing that I've been in this country only 10 years and for me, just before this I worked in Africa, I did my medical college in Russia and I was brought up in Sri Lanka, a third world country, so I've seen a lot of different conditions to say so. One thing in America is lots of health here is reactive, it's not preventative, and health is a larger formula of well-being and I think pickleball brings that holistic environment to health. That's the mental perspective, that's the social perspective. Through the mental perspective and the health benefit where majority of people are proactively I want to be healthy or proactively stationary, and pickleball is that in between. That's getting you moving from that stationary to an active kind of situation. So I feel it's bringing a holistic, proactive kind of way of approaching health and I think that's where that benefit is coming from a health perspective and you can go down a rabbit hole to show the amount of health benefits that pickleball is bringing.
Speaker 2:But even you talked. We just got out of this pandemic right when we were inside for so long, and so I just came to the area. About a year ago I moved down to this Rochester area and I knew nobody. We didn't have any friends in the area. We didn't know anybody. But we started playing pickleball. And now I go to my phone and I can list 15 people who I'm going to go play pickleball with. That I would never have had the chance to meet or be just friends with. So to me, the social aspect of it now, and just your mental health, getting outside you get to see some sunshine. We live in this state that in February I'm not going to be outside as much, but you still get to go meet these people, say hi to your friends. It just keeps you connected within your local community, which is, for us, been so important.
Speaker 1:And it is a year round sport, because winter hits, you just go indoors.
Speaker 4:And you don't have to be an athlete either. I mean, there's so many people that look like me which is not an athlete type body that play phenomenally, so that's a huge perk when you're out there on the courts is, we all have different body shapes and we all have different abilities, but we can all be good at this sport in our own way and I love that part of it.
Speaker 2:We're constantly humbled. When Dan and I started over where we played at our community RET league we're both pretty athletic we walked in and we're like, oh, I can't wait to win every single game tonight. I don't know if either one of us won a game the entire night and we are just oh, we had so much fun. So it's one of those that you don't have to. Yeah, that perfect athletic body to play, and it's anybody can play this.
Speaker 4:Somebody 65 whooped your butt probably.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and we got pickled and we still loved it.
Speaker 3:And I think one more thing to add is like in any other sport, like tennis or cricket or anything like that, if there's a big difference between someone's really good and really bad, it's not fun at all. It's almost like you don't want to do it. That's not the case in pickleball. There are so many times I've just gone and played with these LD layer Ds and we've just really had lots of fun because I can still dial down and have a lot of fun, and I think that's the big difference in this sport. There is that inclusivity in a whole different level of even skill levels.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. It's a huge growing sport and I would imagine because of that, one of the challenges is the availability of courts. I think I read that in the US there is a deficiency of about 25,000 courts right now that are needed to really make up for the demand. How do you see that within this community in terms of future growth for courts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess I'll start, because I keep hitting on February negative 2 degrees, I think in the winter. I know on the Saturday or Sunday morning when it's like, hey, I do have some time to go play pickleball. Where am I going to go? You're on YouTube, you're on Facebook, you're on Google OK, indoor pickleball court Near me. And then all of a sudden you find out all the registrations fall. There's like eight people that can go and I'm late to it. I think we need more indoor facilities, especially in this state. And just it's hard right, because now you get a heated. You know what's the cost gonna be is in a monthly cost. I think just more indoor courts, especially for us, because we are playing pickle ball with more of a wiffle ball when it's 20 mile an hour wind out there, it's also hard to want to go play. So I think just indoor courts for me is something that we definitely more of.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's a problem of supply versus demand. I mean, there's just such a huge demand for people to play and we just don't have enough resources.
Speaker 4:And you know, a lot of communities look to their park and rec and and a lot of park and rec are already over inundated with all sorts of different community activities and sports that need attention. And you know, tennis is still a growing sport and I guess we can live harmoniously together the tennis and the pickle ball world with with painting lines on tennis courts, and I think that's an option. I think that's something that's going to evolve over time. In Oatana I play often indoors at an indoor tennis facility that has transformed for their courts to pickle ball. So it's catching on, is just slow.
Speaker 1:Evolution is what it is and it's gonna take time and we're just living in that uncomfortable state right now, for sure you know, and Blake, you are joining forces and are hosting a pickle ball tournament In Rochester at the Mayo Civic Center, called the Rochester pickle ball classic on October 14th. How did that come about? Oh, you want to start with this one.
Speaker 3:I think for me it has been a passion to see how we can grow it, how can we make it larger, how can we make it shinier, and so this, the initial conversation, did come from Suzanne, I think, mayo Civics and experience Rochester with Monica had a corporate.
Speaker 3:Yes, had reached out to us and said, hey, there is this possibility. How can we kind of bring about, you know, something like this? We had multiple conversations to see what is possible and then she had reached out and said let's even try it small, so two pickle ball and beyond is me, ryan and my wife, and we were so privileged to meet these folks, the three guys, and we're like, hey, let's give it a shot. The economics don't work immediately, right, because we had to raise all of this money. Everything's on us right now.
Speaker 3:But I think the bigger picture is how can we promote it, how can we bring it to a bigger stage? I mean Minneapolis, like, how many centers are there right now? In Dacott's, and Lifetime has said there's so many difference more small, but it's not happening in Rochester. So can we make, can we spark something? Right, and you were talking about, we were talking about the lack of quotes, right, like, what is the economics to have a center? There has to be some business proposition. People need to see hey, there's food traffic. If we can show this can bring food traffic, it might attract the businesses to, like, you know, open up this. Chip shots is an example, right, it's a restaurant with three quotes, right, so you know. So that's how it came about. And then we talked with these guys. They were like, hey, let's, let's go for it. It's always nice to have a group to go together. And we went Dive Nost first into it, I think.
Speaker 2:I'd not to catch up, you know, but a vino croissant. He's like, hey, this is an idea for us. And I mean, I don't think I've ever said no to anything. I was like let's absolutely do this before you know, thinking about 14 details and and. But I think we have to. I think we both have this idea that we're not trying to make money off of this thing. We're just trying to bring pickleball to the area. And you know, for us, if we don't make a penny off this thing, we're fine with that, because we know the next year it's gonna be bigger and the next year people are gonna ask more questions and it's just gonna, you know, promote what we're trying to do with pickleball. And if all we're trying to do is grow the sport, and for us, if we can make an event that people come out have a good time there's some vendors there, there's some concessions that's all we're trying to do and we're looking forward to it and and to add something else like safe, this was somewhere else or some other venture.
Speaker 3:Right, as soon as you throw the idea out, people like, oh, we'll think about it. As soon as I pitch day, let's do an event. I'd talk to Suzanne. She's like we'll help you. Pine Island pickleball my president there. She's like whatever we can do and sleep it's, that's the beauty, I think, of pickleball. And yeah, let's, let's go ahead and try it out one final question in its lightning round.
Speaker 1:What is one piece of advice you can give to somebody just getting started in pickleball? Suzanne.
Speaker 4:I would say Start out wanting to have fun, because you just don't know where it's gonna take. You like had mentioned earlier that you can go in so many directions. You can become really good and be competitive. You could also just have fun. Come to the Eagles, play a few games and have a sip of beer and some dinner with some friends too. So go in it thinking you're gonna have fun and you will have fun. Don't get disappointed or stressed out if you're not where you think you need to be, because you'll get there If you really want to get there. That's what I would say. And wear court shoes.
Speaker 4:You want to wear low court shoes. People are getting hurt all the time because they're wearing those big hoka runners. Don't wear those.
Speaker 2:Blake piece of advice when you're gonna go out, buy a paddle. I mean, you need to paddle to start right. Buy something that you find off the shelf at a local retailer. Don't go online and buy the most you know professional paddle that you can go find with a ton of money. Because you know for me, if you talk to anybody in my life, I dive headfirst into a hobby. And now the next thing, I know that you look like a professional and I have all this stuff and Buy something, because within six months you're gonna have an idea what you want. You're gonna want something new. So don't go out and put a ton of money into it. Just get something to get to go out and play a little bit and Start there and then go from there.
Speaker 3:You know, go do it. Just simple as that. I think there's a lot of fear on how it is. How are how are people going to accept me? Just go enjoy yourself. Like I can't, I can't put anything more to what Suzanne said. I think that's the key. It's something really fun. Just go enjoy doing it. Just get there. Rest will just like fall, fall into place as soon as you get this.
Speaker 1:Well, suzanne, vino and Blake, I can tell you enjoy it. Thanks for being our guests on growing destinations podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us.
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