Pickleball in Cold Places
December 19, 2024
Ken Coston is obsessed with pickleball.
Coston, 60, loves everything about the sport. He plays every day he can, although his job tends to get in the way. Don’t you hate when that happens? Ken works as a material planner for a major oil and gas company. He plans to play every day when he retires. He’s also a paddle junkie who owns at least 15 of them and regularly loans them out to friends and beginners because he wants to spread the love. Ken dinks in his home against a wall mat that has a picture of a net on it and practices spin with another training device.
Ken has lost 40 pounds since taking up the sport in August 2023. “Best shape I’ve been in in 20 years,” he tells me. He’s not a high-level player, with a DUPR of 3.0. But he’s a high-level person and pickleball enthusiast. That’s obvious from the few phone calls and several text messages and emails we’ve exchanged.
However, this pickleball addict has a problem, an issue bigger than unforced errors. A problem that drilling for days can’t help.
Ken Coston lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
Snowfall total in Anchorage last winter: 133.3 inches. Average annual snowfall: 75 inches.
Ken is lucky if he can play pickleball outside six months of the year, from May to early October “It is very, very frustrating,” he tells me.
So Ken plays indoors after work three nights a week during the winter at rec centers and a college gym that have lines for basketball, volleyball and pickleball. Don’t you love those courts?
Ken has lived in Alaska for 51 years. “You go to work in the dark and come home in the dark,” he says.
Despite having only a few dedicated indoor courts, pickleball is popular in Anchorage. The city of 290,000 residents came in 2nd to Omaha, Nebraska, in a contest held by the indoor pickleball club The Picklr to get indoor courts.
Not every cold weather city lacks for dedicated indoor courts. The popular paddle reviewer Chris Olson, who runs the Pickleball Studio website and YouTube channel, lives in Minneapolis and tells me, “We are lucky in Minnesota. We have an abundance of indoor pickleball courts. I’ve seriously lost count of how many we have at this point.” Chris went on to list 15 indoor venues with dedicated courts.
In more good news for pickleball players who reside in The Gopher State, the head of the Life Time fitness clubs lives in Minnesota and loves pickleball. Life Time spokesperson Dan DeBaun says the club has 84 permanent indoor pickleball courts across 15 locations in Minnesota. Nationwide, Life Time has 175 locations; 123 of them have dedicated pickleball courts.
The paddle reviewer Braydon Unsicker hosts the Pickleball Effect website and YouTube channel from his home in Nampa. Idaho. The average low temperatures from November through April are in the 20’s and 30’s.
Braydon says playing outdoors in cold weather requires adjustments. “You need to play with a softer ball to prevent cracking and it helps to play with a control style paddle that’s softer feeling because the ball is hard and it can feel very jarring if you play with a stiffer feeling power paddle. The ball also moves faster so you have to adjust for that, which also makes a control style paddle ideal since it’s easier to generate power.”
Also, cold weather makes pickleballs more brittle, which mean they crack more easily. (Personal note: Four of my Franklin X-40’s cracked in 10 days recently while playing in temperatures between 35 and 45 degrees. Switched to the Selkirk Pro S1 and none of them have cracked, although they reportedly can get slightly misshapen for a few minutes.)
Most players I know dislike the wind more than the cold. Some players refuse to play outdoors when wind gusts reach 20 miles per hour. If you do play outdoors in cold weather, remember to do extra stretching before hand and layer-up your clothing. And even though it may be freezing, you still need to hydrate.
Ken Coston plans to retire in five years and move from Anchorage to North Carolina, not far from the beach. In the meantime, he has a sunny outlook despite dealing with gloomy weather.
“I fight being depressed by keeping active by skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, riding fat tire bikes and many other activities,” Ken says. “It’s all about staying active and embracing winter for six, seven months.”
Seven-thousand miles from Anchorage, in the Southeast Asia country of Indonesia, pickleball’s popularity is booming, in great part due to one man.
Cak Susilo is a 50-year-old East Jakarta resident with a Ph.D in Physical Education and Training. Cak fell love with pickleball several years ago and is a 5.0 player. He introduced pickleball in 2019 to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country with 280 million people.
Cak built two pickleball courts next to his home with his own money and conducts lessons and tournaments. He told me when he began instructing players five years ago, he had a total of five students. Five. Today he says there are more than 10,000 pickleball players in 34 Indonesian provinces. They range from elementary school kids to the elderly. Cak estimates that 80 percent of the players in the region are at the 3.5 level.
I’m proud to say that the company for which I write this weekly blog, Hudef Sport, supplied Cak with dozens of free paddles, equipment bags, hats and t-shirts.
“I am so happy because many people here play pickleball,” Cak said. “It makes them more active and more healthy.”
My thoughts of the week, not all pickleball
· College football’s first ever 12-team playoff that starts this weekend should be a lot of fun. It’s about time the NCAA expanded the playoff from four teams.
· Note to some popular pickleball paddle reviewers who regularly say that when you buy a paddle using their discount code, they receive a “kickback.” That always makes me think of the mob or a government official taking a bribe. Oxford defines “kickback” as “A payment made to someone who facilitates a transaction or appointment, “especially illicitly.” I think a better word to use is “commission.” Reviewers such as John Kew and the aforementioned Braydon Unsicker correctly call it that.
· Speaking of Unsicker, he’s one of the industry’s really good guys. He’s never too busy to reply to your paddle questions and his website is very user friendly for us paddle nerds.
· There was a development recently in the case of the alleged pickleball con man. Rodney Grubbs ran a pickleball gear and clothing company called “Pickleball Rocks.” Grubbs is accused by authorities in his home state of Indiana of stealing upwards of $60 million in a Ponzi scheme. Investigators say Grubbs got money from investors he befriended at tournaments who bought into his company and many were not repaid. The FBI says Grubbs received money from over 500 people. FBI agents raided Grubbs’ home in early December and now want to hear from his alleged victims.
· I recently watched a fantastic film on Prime Video called Derailed. If you like thrillers this one from 2004 is for you. Jennifer Anniston stars in a role unlike any of her others.
· I also watched a very well done but sad documentary also on Prime called Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection. It’s a revealing look at the tragically short life of the woman who along with her brother formed the hit-making duo the Carpenters. Karen died at 32 of a heart attack related to anorexia nervosa. Her mother does not come out looking good.
· I understand the NFL needs to protect quarterbacks due to all the head injuries, but some of these roughing the passer calls are ridiculous. The QB’s barely go down and there’s a flag. And how can so many officials lately miss blatant face mask calls?
· Some baseball writers and fans are saying it’s ridiculous that the New York Mets will pay superstar Juan Soto $765 million over 15 years. I’m a Mets fan and of course it’s ridiculous. And I’m thrilled. What do I care? It’s not my money.
· We were on vacation in Northern California last week and I played pickleball in a 55 and over community in Lincoln, a half-hour north of Sacramento. There were 15 courts with three-foot-high fences separating each court. I wish more pickleball facilities had separators. Over the two days I played, maybe two balls were hit over the fence and onto the adjacent court. Now I might have to move there.
HUDEF Christmas Special:
1. There will be a Christmas gift with the order.
2. Random Paddles only $99.
3. Any 2 Paddles for $199.
4. Each order will have one entrance for the Christmas special drawing. There are 3 Winners wil be announced at Christmas Eve.
https://hudefsport.com/collections/christmas-special