Inside Kean’s New Pickleball Club I Published December 27

By: Jaidon Harris Morales 

One of the newest additions to Kean’s catalogue of clubs is the pickleball club. Created by Emily Lari in January of this year, the club has been gaining popularity on campus.

The idea of creating the pickleball club was born last fall at a pumpkin painting event thrown by another campus club. Lari, who was a freshman at the time, was inspired to create her own.

“I sat with Makenzie [Kuntz], the president of SGA, about how to create a club,” Lari said. “I told her I think it’ll be cool to have something on campus that’s popular but not everyone knows about it, and pickleball just came to mind”

After going thought the creation process, her wish came true.  Once the club was cleared, sign-up sheets were dispersed and interest quickly rose, gaining around 150 sign ups. Despite this turn out, it still managed to keep a low profile, making the club feel like a well-kept secret. 

The club is structed as bi-weekly play meetings with a general body meeting opening and closing the semester. The first general body meeting serves as an introduction to the club and its members, while the final meeting is more of a recap of the semester. The play meetings are run by Lari, who also serves as president, and are more casual than competitive. 

In the play meetings, Lari goes over the fundamentals of the game, but that is where the nitty gritty ends. Once members are familiar with the game, they can play some friendly matches or one of the other mini games that can be played with pickleballs such as queen of the court.  

Although fundamentals of the sport are still emphasized, it is still a club, not a team, so the true nature of the club is to have fun. In keeping with this spirit, when offered the chance to make the club a recreational sport, Lari and the other E-board members opted to remain a club. 

“Since Pickleball is not in the NCAA, it is not a recognized sport,” said Lari. “So, the only thing we could have done was to make it rec. I said no to that because it’ll lose the purpose of a club.” 

Since it remained a club, they needed to throw fundraisers to fund their expenses. These included bake sales and collaborations with other campus groups like the anime society. The fundraisers allowed them to purchase rackets, balls, nets, and anything else they needed to remain functional. 

With a few E-board members who graduated in the spring, the club went into the fall semester with only Lari as president and Madison Molinelli as secretary. However, the continuous growth in popularity allowed the club to fill the vacant positions and will be going into the spring semester fully staffed. 

The pickleball club meets Bi-weekly on Tuesdays from 7-8pm in the D’Angola small gym and new members are encouraged to join any meeting, no sign up needed. Anyone interested in a fun way to meet people and stay in shape need look no further than the Kean Pickleball Club. 

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