Why Is It Called Pickleball?

We’ve been playing pickleball for awhile. And as you can by this website, we’re obsessed with it. Today, we were thinking about how it all began. It’s a highly debated story. But basically, there are two agreed upon anecdotes about where the name “pickleball” came from.

The first is that the name of Joel Pritchard’s (the inventor of pickleball) dog was… you guessed it… Pickles!

The second is that Joan, Joel’s wife, thought “the combination of different sports reminded her of the pickle boat in crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats.”

There’s really no way to know which one (or both!) is true. So we’ll leave it up to you! Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments!