Pickleball picks up in popularity in Mahoning Valley
Grab a paddle and make new friends playing pickleball at the Jewish Community Center in Youngstown and other local courts through the Mahoning Valley.
Mo Gallardo organizes all the sports programs at the JCC, including pickleball.
Pickleball picks up in Youngstown
Gallardo said she had been overwhelmed and excited by the sport’s popularity among Youngstown residents coming more often to learn how to play and join the JCC pickleball league.
“We have organized play right now during summer time on Monday and Thursday nights from 5:30 to 8 p.m.,” Gallardo said. “Pickleball has really blown up. I’ve held a couple foundations clinics, so if you don’t know the sport, you’re going to learn it here, all the basic fundamentals to play just as a novice. From there, all these people, even if they’re not members, they’ve come to [foundations] and they want to keep learning and they want to keep getting better but a lot of them are still novice players just here to have fun.”
According to Gallardo, teams of two play against each other in friendly tournaments. The JCC has four outdoor pickleball courts used during the warmer weather and three indoor courts for winter.
“As an adult, as you get older, it’s harder to make friends,” Gallardo said. “We have an organized open play and I’ll get anywhere between 15 to 30 people so it’ll vary. During the wintertime, this gym is gonna get packed. [It’s a great way] to keep everybody active and I’ve had anywhere between 20 to 50 people in the gym trying to play.”
There’s no sign-up required to participate in the summer pickleball games; Gallardo said interested players can show up.
Visit the JCC for more information.
Meeting the players
Gallardo introduced four JCC pickleball doubles league members, one of whom is a local legend on the court at 11 years old, having some friendly competition against adults.
Joshua Martin and his dad, Ron Martin, play as a team against new and intermediate players at the JCC and other local courts.
Josh said pickleball is his favorite sport.
“I started playing when I was four years old until I was six, but then I stopped for awhile until I was nine or 10,” Josh said.
Josh said his favorite dinking techniques to practice are slamming the opponent’s dink back to them and practicing ‘ping-ponging’ the ball back and forth for ball control.
“The JCC is a nice place because we have a range of players from the beginner to the more sophisticated, so the J is a perfect place to come. We’ve been here the whole time,” Ron said.
Karen “K.J.” Vaughn and her doubles partner, Robert Braun, said they’ve been playing at the JCC since this March.
Like the Martin team, Vaughn encouraged players of all ages and skill levels to try it out, even if they were initially apprehensive.
“I asked Mo about it, what she thought of me playing due to my age,” said Vaughn. “And she’s like, ‘Oh, no come on. Join us. If you can do it, you can do it.’ Apparently there are a lot of people a lot older than me even playing it and loving it.”
Finding a court with Pickleheads
A Canfield native named Brandon Mackie also started his athletic journey by playing competitive tennis before quickly picking up pickleball during the pandemic.
Mackie co-founded Pickleheads, transforming his newly found passion into a business.
Pickleheads is a website helping players across the country looking to play pickleball find a court in their area, as well as connect with other players and find a team.
“The more I started to play, the more I started to see challenges my own journey as player,” Mackie said. “It was very hard to find a court. It’s very hard to find a game because if you had your friends and someone dropped out, there wasn’t an easy way to go out and recruit another player. That was the early inspiration for Pickleheads, a platform that anyone could use to find a court and find the game and play more pickleball. “
His website lists every pickleball court per state, so you can even pick up a paddle while on vacation.
“In the next few weeks, you’ll actually be able to find games, see when they have open play times and when people are playing. So it’ll be a one-stop shop; even if you’re in an area that you have no familiarity, you can find a game, get on the court and hopefully even meet a few people, “said Mackie.
Mackie believes his site is great for beginners and “people that are just getting started with the sport, which is, unsurprisingly the largest segment of players.”
“We want to be a resource for them. Our prediction is pickleball will become the most popular sport in the country, I think it’s well on its way. When will it happen? We’ll just have to see,” said Mackie.
He added to keep an eye out for the Pickleheads app coming soon, where teams can coordinate schedules in one channel, find tournaments and even take lessons.
Read: What is pickleball? Everything you need to know by Brandon Mackie
Learning the techniques
Here’s what Gallardo teaches new players in foundations clinics, including what supplies they’ll need, where to stand on the court, and advice for learning the rules of pickleball:
“First I’ll go over dinking, because that’s just a huge part of the game learning how to do a pass and get a topspin on the ball. [We go over] knowing where you’re at on the kitchen line with your partner because that’s what people forget,” she said.
The kitchen line is the closest non-volley zone to the net, where players must wait for the ball to bounce once before returning it.
Read more on Pickleheads about Pickleball Kitchen Rules.
“Then from there we go the transition zone, focus on our depth perception and knowing where you’re at on the court,” said Gallardo. “Then we go over where to hit the ball, which is at the person’s feet and shoulders so they can’t hit it back [as easily]. After that, we go into serving. So we start close, and then slowly work our way out.”
On the last day of the foundations clinic with Gallardo, she teaches players how to keep score during pickleball, which takes the longest to explain.
“Redundancy is the key to learning any sport,” said Gallardo. “Especially with this game, you’ve got to keep going and keep playing.”
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This story was originally published August 14, 2023 at 4:00 AM.