In­tra­mu­rals: Un­der­stand­ing Pick­le­ball Ba­sics

MISHAWAKA – On Mar. 20, Bethel kicked off Pick­le­ball as the next In­tra­mu­rals in Wiekamp gym. In­tra­mu­rals is hosted by Res­i­dent Di­rec­tor of Oak­wood Nicholas Geever.  

“Pick­le­ball will run un­til the end of the school year,” Geever said. “There are no caps on teams; with us hav­ing an ex­tra hour in the gym, we can ac­com­mo­date more teams . . . [and] there is open or mixed. Mixed al­ways re­quires a fe­male. Open is any com­bi­na­tion.”  

At the end of the sea­son, the win­ning team will re­ceive a prize that is yet to be an­nounced. Matches are Mon­days and Thurs­days at 8 p.m. in Good­man Gym­na­sium. Stu­dents are en­cour­aged to come out and watch the games to cheer on their peers. 

Al­though pick­le­ball is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­ity, there are still many in­di­vid­u­als who may be un­fa­mil­iar with some of the de­tails. Pick­le­ball is a pop­u­lar rac­quet sport played on a court that is sim­i­lar in size to a bad­minton court. The game is played with a plas­tic ball, sim­i­lar to a wif­fle ball, and a pad­dle that is larger than a table ten­nis pad­dle but smaller than a ten­nis rac­quet.  

Here are the ba­sic rules of pick­le­ball:  

Serve: The game starts with a serve, which is made di­ag­o­nally from be­hind the base­line. The server must keep one foot be­hind the base­line and must hit the ball un­der­hand. 

Re­turn: The re­turn must be made af­ter the ball bounces on the court. It can be hit by any player on the re­ceiv­ing team, and the ball must clear the net and land in the op­pos­ing team's court. 

Vol­leys: Af­ter the ball has bounced once on each side, play­ers may vol­ley the ball (hit it in the air) as long as they are not stand­ing in the "kitchen." 

Kitchen: The "kitchen" is a seven-foot area on each side of the net where play­ers are not al­lowed to vol­ley the ball. They must wait un­til the ball bounces in this area be­fore hit­ting it. 

Dou­ble Bounce Rule: Af­ter the serve and re­turn, the ball must bounce once on each side be­fore play­ers can vol­ley the ball. 

Scor­ing: Points are scored only by the serv­ing team. The first team to reach 11 points with a 2-point lead wins the game. 

Switch­ing Sides: Play­ers switch sides of the court af­ter every point is scored, ex­cept for the first point of each game. 

These are the ba­sic rules of pick­le­ball, but there are also vari­a­tions of the game, such as play­ing to 15 or 21 points and al­low­ing dif­fer­ent types of serves. It is also im­por­tant to note that rules may dif­fer slightly de­pend­ing on the spe­cific or­ga­ni­za­tion or tour­na­ment in which the game is be­ing played. 

As for other in­tra­mural ac­tiv­i­ties, Geever shared that there are plans cur­rently in the works for a dodge­ball event and a vol­ley­ball event be­fore the se­mes­ter is over, so keep an eye on the in­tra­mu­rals In­sta­gram page @bethelu­ni­ver­si­ty­in­tra­mu­rals for the lat­est up­dates.