Photo by Alex Grainger

MCPS would integrate pickleball courts into tennis courts. It is probable that pickleball would be a fall sport to limit conflicts with tennis.

Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in America, grabbing students’ attention around school.

The game is a similar concept to tennis and ping pong; it is played indoors or outdoors on a court that is slightly smaller than tennis. The goal of the game is to get to 11 points before the opposing team, which can either be a duo or a solo. Though it is usually a slower game than tennis, pickleball demands its players to use intense strategy to beat their opponents.

With the current rise in popularity, MCPS is beginning to capitalize on the growing sport. The county began to test out how it was played in the district. “It’s going to be introduced next year. There was a pilot program that about 12 or 13 high schools did this year,” athletic director Alton Lightsey said.

The sport will be a program like bocce and handball for the foreseeable future. Bocce and handball are corollary sports, which means that it is played with an even ratio of participants with and without disabilities. “It will start out as a corollary sport like bocce or handball,” Lightsey said.

Since pickleball is such a rapidly growing sport, Lightsey said that it may potentially become something more than just a corollary sport. Whether or not this is the case, pickleball is likely to become a fall sport, because both tennis and corollary softball, which is played at other schools, are played in the spring. “It would probably be in the fall just because that’s where handball is, plus both our tennis teams play in the spring so the courts would not be used in the fall, and they would try to make pickleball an outdoor sport,” Lightsey said.

Not all students want to see pickleball as a sport offered by schools. Sophomore varsity tennis player Vikram Reddy said that it would lead to complications between tennis and pickleball. “As a tennis player I think it would create scheduling conflicts over who gets to use the courts for competitions and practice,” Reddy said.

If pickleball were to be introduced, tennis players would have to work around pickleball conflicts. Tennis players would have to change the way they use the courts to align with pickleball. “If pickleball was introduced into MCPS, I think tennis players will just have to adapt and coordinate times to use the courts so there are no scheduling issues,” Reddy said.

Junior Miles Sklar supports the sport of pickleball being introduced to MCPS because he has not seen a new sport be added in a long time. When pickleball is introduced it would be beneficial to other students who are looking for a new sport to play. “I think they should add it because when was the last time a new sport was added and it would add new opportunities for extracurriculars,” Sklar said.