Family Pickleball

The whole family has now discovered pickleball and now we’re all fans! Aaron bought a couple cheap sets of paddles at Walmart on Saturday and we met the Shaws at the Metfield courts to play. Soren and Corbin are ping pong champs so they caught on very quickly. I took the triplets to the playground (that is finally open! Hooray!!!). We were SO excited to have found an activity the whole family could participate in. 

Unfortunately, a large group of older ladies   arrived and encouraged us to leave, by basically bullying us off the courts by standing over us and keeping score, demanding that once you reach 11 points, your game has ended and we must leave the courts and get in line so they could rotate in. Between our family and the Shaws, there were 15 of us there, and we were rotating around on 2 courts, leaving one open. But the ladies wanting you play competitively informed us that there are age limits for the court use, because not keeping score letting the younger children play means they can’t keep score and are taking too long. We kindly let them know we wouldn’t be much longer and would give them our court (they had commandeered the other 2 already), in a few minutes.  The little ones had been on the courts less than 3 minutes before the ladies had approached us several times. The Shaws had already left because they were tired of being stood over and the rude comments toward our kids.  One duo hovered around Reese, saying, “you’re almost done. This will be game point and then you’re done. And if you haven’t read the rules I will show them to you. You’ll need to leave after this next point. 11 means you’re done”  It was just so rude. I’m so tired of my kids feeling like an inconvenience everywhere in Bella vista. There are age limits or family size limits on everything. Tonight it was the non-family-friendly ladies league acting like playground bullies telling us we have to leave because my 5 year olds can’t keep a proper score. I carried 3 preschoolers to the van, two were in full on tantrums kicking and biting in resistance.  It was a bummer ending to a fun new thing. Pretty disappointed in Bella Vista, tonight.