The Birth of Pickleball

Man playing pickleball
Photo by Joan Azeka on Unsplash

Greg Salsbury is an accomplished educational administrator who has served as president of Western Colorado University for the past five years. When he isn’t busy attending to his professional responsibilities at Western Colorado University, Greg Salsbury enjoys playing pickleball.

The origins of pickleball date back to a single unassuming weekend afternoon on Bainbridge Island, Washington, in the summer of 1965. Washington State congressman Joel Pritchard and successful businessman Bill Bell had just returned from a round of golf to find both their families bored and looking for something to do.

Although an old badminton court graced the Pritchard family property, neither Mr. Pritchard nor Mr. Bell could locate proper badminton equipment. They could, however, find a set of table tennis paddles and a plastic wiffle ball.

As the families began to play with this equipment, they began to formulate the basic regulations and strategies of pickle ball play. By the next weekend, Mr. Pritchard and Mr. Bell had introduced the game to another father in the neighborhood, Barney Mcallum, and the three men began to formulate the fundamental rules of the new sport.

Mr. Pritchard’s wife Joan dubbed the sport “pickleball" because its blend of disparate existing sports reminded her of a pickle boat. A term that applies to the last boat to finish a race, the pickle boat is often comprised of leftover oarsmen from other boats.