the essential
New in Villefranche, this racket sport, which can be described as light tennis, is launched by the retirees’ club.
A new addition to the activities program of the Bastide Seniors club. It is in addition to the hiking, Nordic walking, aquagym and dance activities already offered to members of the retirees’ association.
Since the start of the year, several of them at the Tricot gymnasium have been hitting a yellow ball made of hard plastic and pierced with holes, which produces much less rebound than more soft and flexible balls such as tennis balls. They play pickleball.
“It’s new for our club but also for Villefranche,” note Alain Deschamp and Claudine Cueille, respectively president and treasurer of the club. Both, graduates after training through the Fédération de la Retraite Sportive, supervise the classes which take place in the Adrien Blanchet room (basketball room) of the Robert Fabre gymnasium, on Tuesdays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
-Pickleball is played on a court the size of badminton, but with a lower net (0.91 m). It’s a mix of tennis and ping-pong. A wedding for a sporting activity particularly suited to seniors.
“It works on dexterity, coordination of movements with the eye, cardio, flexibility and memory,” emphasizes Claudine Cueille. Without forgetting the conviviality which governs the sessions. These are open to all members of the club, but of course new ones are welcome. To try, the club can lend full-face carbon fiber rackets, larger than those used in table tennis.
For seniors, pickleball is played two against two. So as a team. Which gives even more interest to the practice of this racket sport created in 1965 in the State of Washington in the United States. If the English name has been used in France, it is not prohibited, and even recommended by defenders of the French language, to replace it with the term lightweight tennis.
