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10th man makes all the difference for Keystone-1 baseball team

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<p>DALLAS &#8212; Back in the fall, Jane Steele hadn&#8217;t even heard of pickleball, much less played it.</p><p>Now, it&#8217;s her favorite sport.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m addicted,&#8221; admitted Steele, from Clarks Summit. &#8220;I can&#8217;t stop playing.&#8221;</p><p>That seems to be the case for a lot of competitors who entered doubles play of the Senior Games of the Keystone State Games.</p><p>They flooded Newberry Estates Country Club on Thursday for an event that not only awarded the top three teams medals in each age category but also served as a national qualifier for the sport.</p><p>&#8220;We have 147 people,&#8221; said Keystone Games pickleball coordinator Jack Monick, a former athletic director at Penn State/Wilkes-Barre. &#8220;For this age bracket, they&#8217;re all excited about playing to get to nationals.&#8221;</p><p>They came carrying racquets made of solid composite that more resembled paddles, to bat a ball they describe as being similar to a very hard whiffle ball, over a net about half the width of those used for tennis.</p><p>&#8220;I played tennis and racquetball before,&#8221; said Steele, who didn&#8217;t pick up pickleball until October after a friend in Michigan introduced her to it during a visit to the midwest last year. &#8220;This is a little bit of everything &#8212; tennis, badminton and ping-pong, kind of.&#8221;</p><p>Steele didn&#8217;t win, but she didn&#8217;t feel as if she&#8217;d lost, either, while making her first Keystone Games appearance in the sport.</p><p>&#8220;Oh, it was fun for me,&#8221; said Steele, who began playing pickleball at Birchwood Racquet Club nine months ago and now plays the sport with her husband at the Wilkes-Barre YMCA. &#8220;I&#8217;ve never played outdoors. It&#8217;s very different. It&#8217;s good to learn how to do both.&#8221;</p><p style="text-align: center;"><strong>SOFTBALL/FOOTBALL THROW</strong></p><p style="text-align: left;">The football flew out of Bonnie Strang&#8217;s hand and, after it fell to the ground.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Then it kept rolling, much to the 75-year-old Media resident&#8217;s delight &#8212; until she was told by Keystone Games officials that her distance would be recorded where the ball first hit.</p><p style="text-align: left;">&#8220;I got a good roll,&#8221; Strang demanded, with mock irritation. &#8220;Gotta put it way out there. Oh, we&#8217;re not playing roll ball?&#8221;</p><p style="text-align: left;">Strang was one of more than a dozen people who signed up for the event, arriving at Kirby Park right after playing pickleball doubles in Dallas.</p><p style="text-align: left;">&#8220;I&#8217;ve been coming (to the Keystone Games) for five or six years,&#8221; Strang said. &#8220;I wanted to keep on doing what I&#8217;ve been doing.&#8221;</p><p style="text-align: left;">Even if she doesn&#8217;t do things quite as well as she once did.</p><p style="text-align: left;">&#8220;As you get older, the distances (of her throws) keep getting less and less, shorter and shorter,&#8221; Strang said.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Still, she was hoping to wind up as one of the few competitors in her age bracket, which would mean a gold, silver or bronze medal.</p><p style="text-align: left;">&#8220;The medals are really nice,&#8221; Strang said, &#8220;probably the nicest medals I get anywhere.&#8221;</p><p>The winner of the competition was 65-year-old Robert Jacoby of Hershey, who was the overall leader in both the football and softball throws.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Paul Sokoloski</p><p>psokoloski@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Paul Sokoloski at 570-991-6392 or on Twitter @TLPaulSokoloski</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Interest in Pickleball picking up rapidly at Keystone Games