Stop Saving Fun for When the To-Do List Is Done: How Pickleball Makes You a Better Leader and Better at Everything Else with Colleen Riddle

Casie (0:04)

Welcome to Dinks On Tap, where the pickleball meets the margarita.

Lauren (0:07)

Or martini, because we enjoy a bit of both.

Casie (0:10)

We're your hosts, Casie and Lauren.

Lauren (0:12)

And each week, we explore what makes pickleball so darn fun.

Casie (0:15)

Not to mention the community and the connection that's built along with it. You know what's suspicious about pickleball, Lauren?

Lauren (0:25)

What's that?

Casie (0:26)

You show up thinking you need a little exercise and six months later, you've got a new friend group, a standing margarita order and a group text that requires more attention than your actual job. At some point, somebody should have handed you a waiver for the emotional involvement.

Our guest today has written a book called Came for the Game, Stayed for the People, True Stories of Pickleball, Friendship and Belonging. Colleen Riddle is a pickleball coach and author who's collected stories about what happens when people show up for a game, find friendship, a fresh start, or a place where somebody notices when they're missing. And that's very Dinks On Tap. We talk about life through the lens of pickleball with occasional interruptions to dispute a line call. So today we're getting into the people who make us keep showing up. Even after we've sworn we're taking a week off.

Colleen Riddle, welcome to Dinks On Tap. You've written an entire book about our favorite part of pickleball. Naturally, we're going to assume it's about us, right?

Colleen Riddle (1:26)

Absolutely. Cheers.

Lauren (1:28)

We are your people.

Casie (1:30)

Thank you for writing this book. We love it.

Lauren (1:33)

Welcome.

Colleen Riddle (1:35)

Thank you.

Lauren (1:36)

Colleen, I read this book on a plane ride. If you would believe that I read the entire book on this one plane ride, it was just a page turner. It was so easy to read firstly, but mostly because the stories were so relatable.

Casie (1:50)

They resonate. Truly.

Lauren (1:51)

It was just, oh my gosh, I know that person. I know that person. I am that person. Right? It's just easy. Then the way that you structured this for the listener is, it was a compilation of I think 16 different people and their personal perspective of how pickleball influence their lives. Then you followed that up with your own interpretation and interaction with that person and their story. You distilled some of the lessons that you observed coming out of their story and your interactions, which was such a great anchor to the story and how to think about it and what to take away from it.

Wonderful, wonderful read. Bravo. I am so stoked. I want to dive in because I'm a total geek about it. As I mentioned, I feel like it's a book club. I've got a book and notes and I want to reference them. However, I want to back up before we do that and just tell our listeners a little bit about your origin story, if you would, how you found Pickleball yourself and how you found yourself interacting with enough people to feel like you felt compelled to write about it.

Colleen Riddle (3:00)

Yeah.

Going back in my story, I found Pickleball in 2019 and I was an athlete. I was a swimmer my whole life. Oh, okay. But that was a long time ago. I swam for Florida State and that little athlete in me had kind of died. I was a personal trainer, so I was in the fitness realm, helping people, training people. And 2019 came along and my husband actually found it first. He had played some tennis with some guys on a Monday night and they said, hey, you need to try Pickleball. So he started playing Pickleball and he's like, honey, I think that you would love this. And I was like, no, I'm not a racket sport person. Like I'm not a tennis player. You know, I don't know.

So I went and I fell in love with it. And it reignited that little, you know, the competition, the sport, the ooh, I've forgotten this feeling of excitement when you challenge yourself and you put yourself out there and then adding the fun aspect with Pickleball, you know, with swimming, you have a team, but it's like whoever hits the wall first wins, right? You know, it's you versus yes, it's an individual sport. So this was so fun to immediately interact with people and have a teammate right by you cheering for you. And so that part was really fun. And so it just ignited that in me.

And then I saw a need, people kept getting injured.

Lauren (4:18)

Yes, of course. People don't think that Pickleball is that athletic until you get into it.