Photo by Erin Nelson.
Anna O’Connell works on different techniques as she and other new members of the Bluff Park Women’s Rec League participate in a Pickleball 101 class with Stan Brown, a certified pickleball instructor and local game official, at the Family Life Center at Shades Crest Baptist Church.
First came the Bluff Park Women’s Wiffleball League, then came kickball. Now the women of Bluff Park have started a pickleball league.
And with the expansion, the women have officially changed the name of their organization from the Bluff Park Women’s Wiffleball League to the Bluff Park Women’s Rec League.
The group has grown from 75 women when the Wiffleball League formed in 2019 to about 200 women now, and there are more on waiting lists, said Sherrie Roberts, the founder and executive director of the group.
She never imagined the effort would get this big, but “I’m not one to do things on a small scale,” Roberts said. “I have a tendency to think big. It just keeps growing and growing and growing.”
Roberts and the group’s board announced the expansion into pickleball this past spring, and the first season officially began Sept. 19.
Tammy Prell, the pickleball commissioner, said she suggested the expansion after she and Roberts started learning to play pickleball earlier this year.
“It was a unanimous vote to give it a try. We just want to expand our offerings,” Prell said.
The group did an informal survey of the community and got a fabulous response, she said. “We knew it was going to be successful because we had so much interest.”
Initially, 150 women indicated an interest, but when it came time to actually form the league, the group decided to limit participation to 64 women for the first season because they had limited availability of pickleball courts, Prell said.
Shades Crest Baptist Church has agreed to let the group use its two indoor pickleball courts in its gym, she said. The plan is to have open play on Tuesday and Thursday nights and competitive play from 1 to 7 p.m. on Sundays, with three two-hour sessions of different groups of women, Prell said.
The matches are two vs. two, with pairs picked randomly by a computer, she said. Women are never partnered with the same partner and never play the same two partners twice, she said. That way, they have an opportunity to meet and play with everybody in the league, she said.
That’s a perfect blend with the original intent of the Wiffleball League, which was to provide a way for women in the community to get
to know one another while enjoying a recreational activity, Prell said. “Everybody’s having a great time.”
And the women are so excited to get to know more of their neighbors, Roberts said.
“I’ve had women tell me it’s changed their life — how lonely they were,” she said. “They’ve been able to make new friends and develop close friends.”
When a big storm hit Bluff Park in August, knocking many trees down across the community (including onto homes) and knocking power out to many, the Wiffleball League postponed play, and the women got busy helping one another and their neighbors, Roberts said. Some pulled out chainsaws and clippers to cut up and remove debris, while others delivered water and snacks to Alabama Power Co. workers and others doing cleanup work, she said.
The pickleball league is set to play through November, and the kickball league soon will enter its second season, which earlier this year ran from January through March with eight teams, involving 96 women. The Wiffleball League recently finished its fifth season, with 150 women on 10 teams.
Of the 64 women playing pickleball, about half were in either the Wiffleball League or the kickball league, and about 80% are beginners in pickleball, Prell said. To help them get started, Stan Brown of the Magic City Pickleball Club led four days of Pickleball 101 training.
The pickleball league has expanded the age range of women participating. The Wiffleball League and kickball participants mostly have been in their early 20s to mid 50s, but the pickleball league is mostly early 30s to late 70s, Prell said.
There is some discussion of doing a spring pickleball league or starting a fourth sport, but those decisions have not been made, Roberts and Prell said. The league, which is a nonprofit, also plans to raise money to help more young girls be able to afford to play in youth sports.
