Every friday at an Auckland YMCA you'll find a group of seniors running around the courts
playing a game called Pickleball.
It's a game only recently introduced to New Zealand but its popularity is fast-rising
with more and more pickleball clubs popping up around the country.
Jeff Parke is Auckland's Pied Piper of Pickleball.
Pickleball is a game that is played on a badminton court with a tennis height net and overgrown
ping pong paddles and a plastic ball with holes in it, that originally was a US wiffle
ball and now is a dedicated pickleball.
It's like making popcorn.
There's this wonderful pop when this plastic ball hits the paddle.
It's a solid paddle and some of them are wood and some of them are composite - they do make
slightly different sounds.
It's just really got a good feel to it.
The game is often called ping pong on steroids and I like that description of it.
Pickleball first became popular in New Zealand in Rotorua but Jeff has founded a number of
clubs around Auckland and says the number of pickleball players is rising.
I think the big reason it got popular is the kind of crowd that you'll see here.
People my age in their 60's and 70's who discovered this game and absolutely love it.
It's just social, it's fun, it's athletic, it gives you good exercise, it gets your joints
limbered up.
It really ticks a lot of boxes for people, for older adults.
Almost all of these ladies have been playing for over a year.
So that was a pretty competitive game we just watched between you ladies?
Well, we try to be.
We try to be.
Yep.
It adds to the fun of it all.
Yeah we aim to win.
I've played tennis and this is quite addictive.
It's a great sport.
So what do you like so much about the sport?
The collegiality and everyone is very helpful when new people are starting.
It's fun, it's social and it's a lot of laughs and it's very noisy.
I think it's just the friendship really, seeing the people all the time.
Just being with a nice group.
And you can play inside when it's pouring with rain.
We do play outdoors sometimes if the weather is fine over in the Mount Roskill area.
I think it's really great that you don't have the sun and the wind like you do in tennis.
And age isn't a barrier of course, just ask the oldest person playing here.
My name is Gary Larson, I'm an ex tennis player.
I retired from tennis and I heard about pickleball, so I looked it up on the internet and saw
people playing it and thought that might be the sport for me.
So I came to Mount Albert about six months ago and started playing pickleball.
And it's improved my fitness no end, and also my mobility.
So it's been a wonderful sport for me and I've even been able to go back to tennis.
It's a sport that you could play to any age.
If you look around the club here you'll see a lot of different ages playing pickleball.
You're pretty good at converting some of our listeners I think, you're very convincing.
Well I'm just so keen about it.
And he even plans on recruiting the grand kids.
I think they like to see me play and I will certainly be getting them playing pickleball.
It's up to everybody to keep their own fitness up and maybe it helps for a longer life, I
don't know.
I hope so (laughs).
Jeff explains how pickleball in New Zealand has changed his life since moving here.
I'd say the pickleball community is by and large, fun-loving, social and mildly competitive
some of them.
But for me personally it's just been the ticket, because you know you just meet sociable people
who like to yack on the court and off the court.
It's just been wildly successful here at Mount Albert.
In the last few months it's been played at the Ellerslie YMCA, been played at Te Pai
tennis club in Henderson, the down town YMCA in the CBD is starting up a program.
Howick YMCA has a program.
Manurewa netball has started a program.
There's a group of Chinese people playing at the Chinese community center.
So I'm now in heaven, there's pickleball everywhere.
I recently moved to Waiheke Island and I got a group playing out there so now I feel very at home.
Anywhere I go there's pickleball.