Six thousand primary school children have experienced pickleball since September thanks to the brilliant work of Scott Tift and local partners in Kent.
Scott is co-founder and Head of Community Programmes at Total Sports Coaching, which delivers PE, breakfast, lunchtime and after-school sports provision at 25 primary schools across Thanet, Dover and Folkestone.
Scott, who is a long-time pickleball player at Baypoint Pickleball Club, started delivering pickleball sessions in 19 primary schools at the start of this academic year.
One of the schools, Ramsgate Holy Trinity, has taken to the sport so wholeheartedly that they’ve hired Total Sports Coaching to run a morning pickleball club. Twenty pupils attend regularly, starting their school day by playing pickleball, having breakfast, then heading to class. “Some of those children usually struggle to get to school, so this is a great carrot for them to attend and sets them up for the day in a positive mood,” said Scott.
Scott plans to introduce pickleball at the other seven primary schools where Total Sports Coaching delivers PE and sport provision before the academic year is out. He also wants to deliver in local secondary schools.
“The great thing about pickleball is it’s a new sport – there’s no stereotype so no kids are put off,” says Scott. “If you do six weeks of rugby, you lose 30% of the girls immediately; if you do dance and gymnastics, you lose the boys. So this is open to all, which is why we’re pushing it so much as a company.
“Schools employ us to run their PPA [Planning, Preparation and Assessment time] and PE provision, so we can run their sporting activities as we see fit. We set up four or five courts on the playground at lunchtimes and it’s an open invite for children to play and learn. The teachers get curious and come out for a hit, then chat around school gets going, parents get talking and that’s where the buzz comes from.”
In addition to his schools work, Scott has established a pickleball academy at Baypoint Pickleball Club with separate sessions for primary and secondary-age children. These have only just started but already 14 children have taken part – many attracted by the buzz created by the schools programme.
Pickleball hasn’t started entirely from scratch in the region. One member of Baypoint Pickleball Club happens to be a school head teacher and has run pickleball sessions on a marked-out court in the school hall since around 2015.
Sheena Maclean-Bell, a local police officer and highly experienced pickleball player, is also leading a local multi-agency project to resurrect outdoor pickleball courts in Thanet and use them to run diversionary activities for young people who are at risk of becoming involved in crime and anti-social behaviour. There will be more on that project on pickleball52.com very soon!
I love stories like this. The kids have fun, the parents and teachers discover the game and before you know it you have intergenerational play which is one of the unique things about this sport that I love.