Nick Holman stood in front of a wooden picnic table surrounded by friends, family, and a few beers. Across the fence, the thwack, thwack, thwack of the pickleball intermingled with laughter and perhaps a few curse words.
Holman, 38, of Lake St. Louis, was at Chicken N Pickle in St. Charles with 10 family members, ready to give pickleball a try for the first time. He said his wife had been trying to talk him into it for a while, even buying him paddles and balls. Holman and his crew rented the court at $20 an hour for two hours. If he didn’t already have his gear, he could have rented that, too.
“Oh yeah, this turns a workout into something a lot more fun,” Holman says with a laugh. “Pickleball offsets the beer, a little less guilty for the pleasure. You can use the carbs for energy.”
It was his sister’s idea to combine pickleball with a party. Holman loved it. “We can get in and kind of relax and still have an activity we can rotate through,” Holman says.
