Trying new things can be scary.

That’s the whole point of this blog, right? I’m trying pickleball and blogging about it to show you that even though it’s scary to try something new, especially as an adult, that it’s fun and rewarding and brings with it so many new benefits!

So I went to my first pickleball ladder over the weekend! For those of you who are like me and think a ladder is a metal or wooden contraption intended to help reach things at great height, well, we are right. However, a ladder in pickleball (and maybe other court sports?) is also a format of play. A ladder uses multiple courts - let’s say three - there’s a bottom, middle and top court. You get paired off and assigned to a court randomly, so everyone is playing doubles. You get an allotted amount of time to play one game and when time is up, the winning pair moves up a court and the losing pair moves down a court. You split from the person you previously played with so everyone is getting mixed up and new pairs each game. If you keep winning you stay on the top court and if you keep losing you stay on the bottom court. There are beginner, intermediate, and advanced ladders so you’re always playing with people close to your skill level, and if you win all the games in any given ladder, they make you move up to the next level.

I had been wanting to try the beginner ladder at PowerPlay Pickleball for a while, so the week before I brushed up on my skills in the Advanced Beginner Lesson with Coach Kelley. That two-hour class kicked my butt and I could barely move the next day (that’s what I get for taking time off), but it’s so good and obviously a great workout!

Walking into the ladder I felt excited and ready, but also nervous! My nerves quickly dissipated, though, because I saw Renee, from the pickleball clinic I took in January, and she was doing the ladder too. She asked if I wanted to warm up with her and of course I agreed. The ladder was actually so fun and the people were super nice. If you can believe it, I did not lose all my games, hahahaha. If my math is correct (and honestly, who is expecting it to be?) I won three games, including two in a row to start, so I played my way up to the top court! I could barely hit a ball after those first few games though, and spent most of the rest of the night on the bottom court, but I had a really good time and want to do it again next week. A memorable moment in the night for me was when Coach Kelly pointed out after one game that even though my partner fell on the court, he was able to get back up, and because of my coverage of the court upon seeing my partner down, we won that point! A proud, unexpected moment indeed.

While the ladder was fun and I am definitely going back, situations where you play game after game, rather than have instruction, like I’m used to, really show you where your weaknesses are. I, for one, cannot consistently return a serve inside the court, which is going to be a problem for sure, so I need to work on that. I also feel like dinking is one of the things I can do consistently, but at the beginner level there is hardly any dinking and not much control - we are all just trying to hit the ball.

Something I love about pickleball, which I had in my ladder, was that it really is for people of all ages. There was an entire family - mom, dad, and two daughters - all playing in our ladder. Not sure there's another recreational sport where you could find that kind of inclusivity.

This was the Saturday night ladder that I played, and it is fairly new to the PowerPlay schedule. Apparently, the one on Tuesday night is bigger and where the action is and it’s hard to get into that one because it fills up quickly, but maybe after playing a few Saturday nights I’ll feel brave enough to try Tuesday.

Try your own beginner pickleball ladder and wish me luck! 

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Read the first entry here.

Read the second entry here.

Read the third entry here.

Read the fourth entry here.