KALAHEO — Melanie Okamoto of the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation said the challenges are not as easy as they appear, Tuesday morning at the Kalaheo Neighborhood Center.
As an example, the Bucket challenge involved a player lobbing five balls, the final one being an orange ball, in an attempt at landing the ball in the bucket located across the net on the pickleball court in the first pickleball challenge set up by the Dept. of Parks and Recreation.
The Monkey challenge involved a participant hitting the pickleball into the monkey’s mouth where a $100 Visa gift card rewarded the feat.
“This is about skill,” Okamoto said. “The challenges look easy, but it’s not that easy.”
Shelea Blackstad succeeded in earning the grand prize after dropping her orange ball into the bucket to the cheering of her group of college students who are yet to go off to school.
“I just play with family on the weekends,” Blackstad said. “They needed some players so I just started to play.”
Blackstad was one of nearly a hundred pickleball enthusiasts who took in the challenge course designed to hone pickleball skills.
Okamoto was thrilled with the turnout.
“Look at the crowd,” she said. “We even have college kids doing this. But more importantly, we reached the senior age group we’ve been trying to get for years. We were missing that one age group — the 30, 40, and 50 years. But they all play pickleball.”
Eddie Beetschen and Mark Wagner, both of Kalaheo, were responsible for all the prizes that were distributed throughout the morning.
“Our goal is financial support to improve the overall environment of pickleball,” Beetschen said. “I’ve played tennis, and paddle tennis my entire life, and pickleball is the best paddle sport I’ve run into because of the fun and community. We want to help the sport grow. You can’t do this on the mainland because everything is so big.”
Pickleball plays to an audience of several hundred people on Kauai, in all areas from Princeville, to the Westside, Okamoto said.
“Jack Hodges was the pickleball ambassador and came into the office wanting to introduce this game to the island,” Okamoto said. “That was three years ago. We had our first clinic, and it’s been nonstop, ever since. We hope to do a challenge course like this in Kilauea so the North Shore people have an opportunity to learn and have fun, too.”
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Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
