Pickleball bounces into Brawley

BRAWLEY — The recent pickleball craze that has gained national and air-time recently hit Brawley Tuesday, May 30, when Janet Stills and her husband Kenny Stills hosted a tournament at their property.

Janet taught pickleball at Barbara Worth Junior High in Brawley and has 18 years of experience in the sport as an instructor.

“I really enjoyed teaching pickleball and the kids seemed to like it - it was something different that they’ve never seen before,” said Stills. 

Stills recently retired last June and as a gift, her husband Kenny Stills painted a court at the back of their shop.

“We’ve had a group of ladies and men gather and play since last October,” said Stills. “We started out with a group of four and now we’re up to about 17 players.”

“We decided to try to get a tournament going before it gets too hot,” said Stills. “Our tournament today was a combination of our Brawley group and the Holtville group. There were eight teams involved with two players on a team (doubles) where you play against another two players.  The score went to 11 points.” 

 The event was organized in a draw-style fashion where names were put in a bucket, pulled out, and the teams were designated that way and the age of the participants spanned from 14 years to 75 years old.

There were two brackets, the winners’ bracket, and the consolation bracket. Medals were awarded to the first, second, and third place winners of each bracket – gold, silver, and bronze.

“It was a really fun day,” said Stills. “We started at 6:45 a.m. and we finished near 9. It went by really fast.” 

Winners result went as follows…

Winner's bracket - Gold - Lynn Webster & Lou Knifong, Silver- Dana Cato and Amaris Rothfleisch, and Bronze - Debbie Fieldsted and Sonia Knifong.

Consolation Winner's Bracket - Gold Janet Stills and Mary Harmon, Silver- Mary Emanuelli & Julie Velasco, Bronze- Nikki Reeves Rothfleisch and Lucy Hendry.

“We’ve been trying to work with the Brawley City Parks & Recreation to get the old tennis courts at Meserve Park updated and going again for pickleball use,” said Stills. “We were trying to get it on the agenda since last October but it’s moving very slowly. For now, we play at my place.”

According to organizers, plans for another tournament this year are in development. 

“I’d like to invite the pickleball group from El Centro next, but they are a big group and we’d have to have more courts so that’s why we really want the City of Brawley to help us to get more up and available,” said Stills. “We could potentially get four courts up at Meserve Park and that would really help too. The concrete there has been ruined. We need to get it refurbished. We keep pressing because we know there are a lot of people who would like to play but my place doesn’t have the room. There is the liability of it being a private place and letting everybody come and play, as much as I’d like to.” 

Janet contributed much of the current mainstream spike in pickleball enthusiasm to various contributors.

“Lots of retired people want to play, it’s televised now, and the top pickleball champion is a 16-year-old girl in the pro circuit named Anna Leigh Waters,” said Stills. 

Stills concluded with her optimism for more courts to become available in the city of Brawley.

“We’re hoping to have another one in the fall with the hope that we can get those courts at Meserve Park up so we can invite the whole community,” said Stills. “Right now, it’s a small group of us. If we can get more courts going, we can get more people involved.”