'Astonishing' success for Harrogate in pickleball one of world’s fastest-growing sports

Members of Harrogate Pickleball Club which is based at St John Fisher High School in Harrogate. (Picture contributed)

The sport in question is pickleball – one of the world’s fastest-growing sports – and players from Harrogate Pickleball Club won a slew of medals recently in the largest tournament held to date held outside North America.

Easy to learn but hard to master, pickleball has won celebrity support from the likes of George Clooney, Leonardo DeCaprio, John McEnroe and the Williams sisters.

Basking in success at this relatively new pursuit, the club's founders Art and Sue Severn said: "North Yorkshire and Harrogate is becoming a veritable hotbed for this unique and highly contagious racket sport, which began initially in the late 1960s in the USA

"It now has a huge following in both the USA and Europe, with the UK energetically jumping on the bandwagon."

Played over four days at Telford in Shropshire, the The Pickleball English Open tournament featured competitors from 35 countries with 1,069 registered players of all ages and skill levels.

Based at St John Fisher High School, Harrogate Pickleball Club was represented by ten players and, astonishingly for a small club, won a combined total of 12 medals.

The Harrogate players doing the town proud were Art and Sue Severn (three golds), Nathan Hill (two), Tim Shepherd (one), Chrissie Payne (one) and Jane Wilson (one).

In addition, silver medals were won by Sam Pearce, Peter Wilson, and Steve Dann plus a bronze by Mike Miles.

But what, readers will be wondering, is pickleball?Pickleball is a racket or paddle sport in which two or four players hit a perforated, hollow plastic ball with paddles over a 34-inch-high net until one side is unable to return the ball or commits an infraction.

While it resembles tennis and table tennis, pickleball has specific rules, paddles and court dimensions.

A pickleball court is the same size as a doubles badminton court at 44 feet long and 20 feet wide, and the paddle is larger than the one used in table tennis.

Information: https://www.pickleballengland.org/