Looking for local pickleball players

I just moved and I’m having a hard time locating drop in games where any ability can go and play. If anyone in Smithfield, UT it Cache Valley knows of this kind of community let me know. I can only find organized tournament style pickleball here and I just want to get out and play.

Hey there, @dbridgeclark!

I’m not familiar with the Smithfield area, unfortunately :disappointed:

My advice would be to “Be the one!” to start the drop-in style, in your community! The alternative is to wait, and hope you can find someone else who’s doing it. But it sounds like it’s not happening. Another option is to do something like what @Ari started… a weekly “beginners clinic” that’s free and designed to teach people how to play, and give them some time for open rec play!

When I started playing pickleball last year, I only had one friend that played… the one and only @danisonhighland! We would go to the courts and grind it out at singles for 3-5 hours… usually 2x/wk. My body couldn’t handle any more!

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Being at the pickleball courts for an extended period of time, consistently, every Tue and Thu morning, from 6am - 9am ish allowed me to see lots of other pickleballists :smirk: coming and going. When we saw someone who looked new to the game, we’d invite them to join in with us. They were excited to find out that we were playing every Tue and Thu, at the same time. They started coming regularly.

Because we were at the pickleall courts regularly, we got to know/recognize some of the other really good players, in our area. We’d stick around and watch their games and occasionally we or they would ask if we could mix in. We took every opportunity to play with, and most importantly… LEARN FROM the better players around us. Players like @pickleballlove5 or @lorimacle graciously invited us to join in and play with their group. We made new connections and grew our network!

We’d also invite athletic guys and gals from our church congregation to join us. Some would come once… others started coming regularly! After about a month we had 8-12 people who would join in our group… but we continued to talk to all the other “strangers” who were at the courts at the same time… and invite them to join our little “mixer”

We started doing a little “King’s Court.” This allowed everyone to mix up… get to know one another… different styles of play… and really enjoy some exciting pickleball!!

We also played in every pickleball tournament that we could find. We got really good at losing in those tournaments! :laughing: but we had a blast… and again… met a bunch of cool people that we could play and practice with, in the future!

Now, I probably have around 100 phone numbers of good friends that I loooove to play with.

Just curious… what times of the day are you available to play, and for how long?

Maybe starting with one or two friends is all you need to get started putting together a fun little mixer group that’s inclusive of all skill levels! The king court approach is nice because it allows puts players of similar skill levels together.

Sorry for the discourse here! Hopefully, some of this is helpful for you, Andrew… if nothing else, just remember to BE THE ONE who creates the experience you’re looking for, in your community!!

Hey Andrew!!

Like @jordan I haven’t made it to Smithfield in my pickleball journey, however you may want to check out this Smithfield Pickleball Facebook group! It looks like its a private group so I’m not sure how active they are but this may be a good place to start! :slight_smile:

It certainly wouldn’t hurt to start up another group as well! The more pickleball the better!!!

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Let’s play this weekend.