The ball sensation that’s sweeping the nation has finally swept Vassar’s campus. Of course, I’m talking about pickleball. If you don’t know what pickleball is, have you been living under a rock? Are you stupid? Did you fail the PACER test in middle school and had to go home crying about it to your mom like a little wuss? Pickleball actually doesn’t involve any marinated cucumbers as one might assume, but is in fact a sport where players hit with paddles a ball perforated with holes (giving the appearance of a pickle, I guess?) over a net. It’s similar to tennis, but differs in the sense that it makes you look like a 60-year-old with back problems while playing the game.
Despite its complete lack of appeal in my opinion, pickleball has massively grown in popularity within the past few years, leading to thousands of pickleball tournaments where balls are paddled, and supportive friendships are slowly tested in the audience. Recently, Vassar students have taken to the tennis courts to play pickleball themselves. On a sunny afternoon, you can see groves of young pickleball players drawing chalk lines and cranking nets down on tennis courts due to the sport using just a slightly smaller court (which they literally didn’t even need to do as the tennis courts have smaller lines anyway, but NO, those are simply TOO PROPORTIONAL for the contrarian pickleballers!). The undue strain on the tennis nets can cause them to weaken and lead them to prematurely break. In other news, Vassar’s tennis costs skyrocketed as teams scramble to buy new tennis nets.
“I just think the game is a lot of fun,” one anonymous pickleball lover commented. “When I hear that eardrum-splitting popping sound of ball hitting net, my pickle starts balling. And I know the name carries a lot of unnecessary innuendo, but what sport doesn’t? I mean, football? That’s basically public foreplay. I know I’m sporting a semi every time I happen to catch Sunday’s game.” I think this player is doing foreplay wrong.
“I think it’s stupid,” Madi Donat ’23 [Disclaimer: Madi Donat is Humor Editor for The Miscellany News] guffawed. “Just play tennis or pick up another sport. Vassar’s reputation is already in the gutter, and now we have anemic theater kids playing a sport that’s making them look like what’s been called ‘the lantern flies of the sports world.’ Anyway, do you want to get dinner after this? I really want to check out that British concept at Global.”
Whether you’re a relish raconteur or a cucumber critic, there’s no doubt that pickleball is here to stay. Until it gets swept up by the next viral sport. Who knows? Maybe skateboarding will finally make a comeback.