CENTRE WELLINGTON – A pair of senior athletes from Elora and Fergus got themselves out of a pickle to be the top team in one of the fastest growing sports.
Tim Porter and Bryce Richardson, from Elora and Fergus respectively, won gold at the Canada 55+ Games for pickleball in the men’s 65 years and older category at the games held recently in Quebec City.
The pair first qualified after coming second in the Ontario seniors tournament held in Kitchener this past spring.
After a 16 round robin tournament, Porter and Richardson eventually ended up in the finals against a team from Saskatchewan in a tough match they were close to losing.
“We actually lost the first game and Saskatchewan had two match points on us in the second game that would have eliminated us,” Richardson said in a phone interview.
They ultimately managed to pull through and get the gold medal win, which Richardson said was amazing considering how close the Saskatchewan match was and coming out on top over the team that beat them in the Ontario finals.
“I’m very competitive though so in my sporting history that’s what I like to do,” Porter said. “I like to give it everything I got, work hard and I’m not there to just be a number I’m there to try to win it.”
Richardson has been playing pickleball longer than Porter has, seven years to Porter’s one and a bit, and acknowledged him as the better player in the pair and the team captain although Porter said he had never heard of it before Richardson asked him to play.
Porter said the key to playing pickleball well is to have a solid strategy.
“You have to sum up your opponents and pick on their weaknesses otherwise you just hit the ball with no intention of what you’re trying to do, it's just in the lap of the gods. So you have to have a plan,” Porter said.
Richardson thought the key is to be quick and having a sports background doesn’t hurt — both were avid tennis players prior to picking up the pickleball racquet.
Pickleball has become very popular in recent years, with Richardson calling it the fastest growing sport in North America.
“It’s really quite friendly and it’s social and there’s a big bell curve of ability in it so that you can get a good game regardless of if you’re a beginner or advanced,” Richardson said, adding the relatively small size of pickleball courts means a higher density of games can be played at once compared to traditional tennis.
Porter also highlighted the sport as being accessible to a range of skill levels but most of all considered how fun it is as the true reason for its popularity.
“If you imagine four people at the net it gets a little bit quick, it gets reactionary and you laugh, you giggle, it’s a lot of fun,” Porter said.
With the growing popularity in Centre Wellington, Richardson said there’s a need for more capacity for the sport in town.
“Because it has such mass appeal, it would be great if it was on Centre Wellington’s radar to expand some kind of facility or have a dedicated facility,” Richardson said. “Right now it is really just shared with the halls at the sportsplex, it gets bumped by all the different events that need to go into those halls.”
