The TU Pickleball club and The Hidden Opponent (THO) hosted a pickleball event that generated high turnout from both athletes and non-athletes alike. The two-hour event, held on Friday, Nov. 3, saw all six of the brand-new pickleball courts near Bruce Thomas Hall filled with players.

The event was a joint effort between the TU Pickleball club, which was founded earlier this year, and THO, a student-athlete mental health organization brought to campus in spring of 2022. Participants got to partake in snacks, drinks and wristbands from THO and experience pickleball with friends in a low-pressure environment. Brooke Belitz, junior biology major and THO treasurer, was one of the leaders behind the event.

“We’re trying to get people together,” Belitz said. “We think it’s a great way to not only build a community, but also just have fun with sports. I think pickleball is such a fun thing where it doesn’t matter how good you are. You can go out and play with anyone and meet people. And we thought it would be a great way to go out, have fun and destress after midterms.”

Pickleball as a sport has existed for almost eighty years, but has skyrocketed in popularity over the last several years. The game is a combination of standard tennis and ping-pong using a plastic ball and paddles on a court about half the size of a regulation tennis court. The sport has seen growing popularity not just in the U.S., but internationally, with leagues and tournaments popping up across the world within the last few years.

“I may be biased through tennis, but my entire family plays pickleball,” Belitz said. “We’ll go out on weekends and play over summer and winter break in the mornings, and it’s something that’s really fun to do socially. I think other kids at Trinity have seen that, and it’s grown a lot through social media presence as well. I don’t think anything changed, but it just gained awareness through different platforms.”

Because of its similarity to tennis, it should come as no surprise that the main forces behind the event — Belitz, THO’s Olivia Kim and TU Pickleball’s Trinity Levy — all play on the Trinity University Women’s Tennis team. Kim, junior psychology major, described the differences between tennis and pickleball.

“The weight of the ball is a lot lighter,” Kim said. “You have to move your feet a lot more, but it’s also easier to get a lot of things out of the air. The swing is basically the same, but the ball and the court are the two biggest things.”

“It’s actually a little bit harder,” Belitz said. “People say, ‘Oh, tennis players should be really good, like they’d really correlate well,’ and it does to a point. But sometimes you try to do too much with the ball, and then all of a sudden, it doesn’t stay in. I think the shots somewhat carry over, but when you play pickleball as a tennis player, you sometimes play, like, it doesn’t help you as much as you think it would.”

Over the summer break and into the first month of school, the old tennis courts between Thomas Residence Hall and the swimming pool were renovated, resulting in two permanent outdoor basketball courts and six pickleball courts. During the two-hour event, all six courts were filled with doubles and singles rounds and spectators getting in on the action. It was a huge turnout considering some members of both clubs were out of town due to the SCAC volleyball and soccer tournaments held on that same day.

“We forgot that so much was going on,” Kim said. “Men’s and Women’s Soccer are gone for SCAC, as well as Volleyball and Men’s Basketball. We didn’t take into account that a lot of sports are starting to travel, so we kind of expected a little bit more. But we still got a great turnout.”

Though the event only lasted for a couple of hours, it still had a fantastic turnout from all types of students. Whether club supporters, varsity athletes or just students walking past looking for something fun to do, the event had support from all across campus. For more information on both The Hidden Opponent and TU Pickleball, you can go to both groups’ Instagram pages (@tupickle and @tho_trinity) to learn more about future events and how to get involved.