David McCallum, Barney’ s son, remembers the birth of the game from a much younger perspective.
“ As a 10-year-old at the time, nobody was being that diligent about taking down the history of how things happened,” he said.“ I was one of those kids who was always fascinated by the adults. I paid attention to what was going on with them, with the kids down on the beach, and what was going on with this game. The adults, they took to it right away. The parents invented it. It was a bunch of 40-year-olds dinking around with this thing and it was curious to me that they were all playing this new game and liking it.”
The younger McCallum recalls that, in its infancy, it appeared that pickleball might be the solitary highlight of a bygone summer— a game that came and went only to be remembered with a smile.
“ I don’ t think anybody intentionally took it off the island after the summer ended,” he said.“ It was a neat activity to keep adults busy. That first year, there wasn’ t much activity regarding pickleball off the island. I can remember my dad working on paddle designs a few times, but that was it.”
The following summer, however, the courts were swept off, the nets put back up and the paddles came back out, McCallum said.
“ I’ m not sure anyone thought that it would happen,” he remembers.“ That second year was when it started to move off the island. People realized that this was fun and great recreation and exercise.”
Next, a nearby family on the island built a court and used it to entertain a lot of their guests. The circle grew, and local gyms in the Seattle region started picking it up as well.
“ I was an envelope manufacturer,” Barney McCallum said.“ But I took it on myself to supply people with the things they needed to play. People called me for balls or paddles. They referred me to friends. There was no vision that this thing would grow into what it is today. If we thought this would be huge back then, people would have written it off as whiskey talk.”
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
As word spread about the game and players became more and more enthusiastic about it, the media started to take notice of this“ craze” coming out of the Pacific Northwest.
“ The publisher of our main newspaper in Seattle told a guy at a newspaper in New York about [ pickleball ], and he came out here and interviewed me,” Barney McCallum said.“ I arranged games and he played and went back home. He called me from New York later asking how much a starter set cost. He called a second time and asked me if I was prepared to fulfill a lot of orders. I said,‘ Yes.’”
However, at $ 29.50, McCallum wasn’ t quite prepared for the response the newspaper article generated. Checks from all over the country started flooding into his envelope factory, which was the address he used for pickleball merchandising. McCallum said he got out his handsaw and started making paddles. He also said he and Pritchard decided at that point to get a copyright on the concept and a business was born.
“ For the first 10 years, everybody wondered if it was going to die off and go away,” said David McCallum.
“ We could not have made it without the support of free rent or a lot of capital,” Barney McCallum said.“ What I sensed about the game was that it was a winner.”
While the rules of the game were set in stone pretty much as soon as the McCallum family returned home from their summer vacation that first year, as time when on, Barney McCallum did refine certain aspects of the sport, namely the paddles.
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The first permanent pickleball court was constructed in the backyard of Joel Pritchard’ s friend and neighbor, Bob O’ Brian. |
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During the spring of 1976, the first known pickleball tournament in the world was held at South Center Athletic Club in Tukwila, Washington. David Lester won Men’ s Singles and Steve Paranto placed second. |
USAPA“ was organized to perpetuate the growth and advancement of pickleball on a national level.” The first rulebook was published in March, 1984. The first Executive Director and President of USAPA was Sid Williams who served from 1984 to 1998. He was followed by Frank Candelario who kept things going until 2004. |
Joel Pritchard passed away at age 72. |
There are 39 known places to play in North America listed on the Pickleball Stuff website. This represents 10 states, 3 Canadian provinces and about 150 individual courts. |
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1975 |
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A corporation was formed to protect the creation of this new sport. |
The National Observer published an article about pickleball followed by a 1976 article in Tennis magazine about“ America’ s newest racquet sport.” |
The first composite paddle was made by Arlen Paranto, a Boeing Industrial Engineer. He used the fiberglass / nomex honeycomb panels that commercial airlines use for their floors and part of the airplane’ s structural system. Arlen made about 1,000 paddles from fiberglass / honeycomb core and graphite / honeycomb core materials until he sold the company to Frank Candelario. |
By 1990, pickleball was being played in all 50 states. |
The game of pickleball was introduced for the first time in the Arizona Senior Olympics through the efforts of Earl Hill. The tournament was played at Happy Trails RV Park in Surprise, AZ, and drew 100 players. It was the largest event ever played to that point. |
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