Five years ago I didn’t even know what pickleball was, now I play regularly. Over the past few years, pickleball has become one of the fastest growing sports in the United States. According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), over 8.9 million people played pickleball across the country in 2022 which was nearly double the 4.8 million players reported in 2021. While the game had been on the rise prior to Covid-19, the pandemic definitely helped further spread its popularity as seen in a report by the Association of Pickleball Professionals which found that more than 36.5 million people played pickleball from August 2021 to August 2022.