The Monthly Slice: Seeing the world through Pickleball

Published 3:30 am Wednesday, November 26, 2025

By Tim Williams

I often hear friends lament that their vacation activities did not give them a true taste of the local culture and people. Despite seeing stunning tourist hotspots, they frequently remark it was a sterile experience that felt incomplete without meeting and talking to more locals, getting off the beaten path, and potentially making new connections that will last a lifetime.

When I suggest they should have brought their pickleball paddle along, the first reaction is often “Yeah, right!” But think about it: what could be easier to pack than a paddle (flat, small, and light!) and maybe an extra pair of shoes?

While the idea of playing pickleball in a strange city – or even a foreign land – may sound odd, it’s a proven way to meet new people and dive head-first into local culture. Scores of us in the Sequim Picklers have packed our paddles and found unexpected friends and adventures along the way.

Any area with public pickleball courts will have a system where players rotate in to join games. Some are well-signed and intuitive; others are a little more opaque and unique to the locality, but those systems simply provide an opportunity to ask other players how to join in.

Pickleball players are widely known to be among the most welcoming to newcomers of any sporting group, so you’ll typically get an eager explanation of how to “paddle in” and often an invitation to join that person as their partner for the next game.

Sequim Picklers Kim and Mike Nizic had exactly this experience when first starting to play at Carrie Blake Park and have carried that experience and tradition forward to international adventures in pickleball. As long-time participants in other sports, they decided to give pickleball a try when they first moved to the Olympic Peninsula. It didn’t take long before they were hooked and within a few months they had over 80 new friends with whom they were playing and socializing regularly.

With the ease of making new friends locally, the Nizics thought it was a natural extension to do the same thing on the road. Soon, they were planning trips around pickleball tournaments and finding new friends at every stop along the way. As Mike says, they feel like they now “know someone in every town and never have to wonder about where to play, eat, or even stay.”

When it came time to choose a location for a new winter residence, the draw of Los Barriles, Mexico – the number one destination in Latin America for pickleball with 44 courts – was a natural fit. The Nizics winter there each year and have become so integrated into the community that they were selected to represent Mexico in the recent Pickleball World Cup in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Mike noted they had some language barriers at the event but that the universal language of pickleball quickly overcame those and, of course, they came away with a number of new friends from all over the world.

The Nizic’s story is not unique. Sequim Pickler Terri Wiebe has also met new people and forged new friendships in her time as an ex-pat living in the UK. While Terri didn’t have to overcome any language barriers, she did have to get accustomed to the Brits’ tendency to borrow signals from cricket to use on the pickleball court.

The traditional baseball “safe” sign is often used in the U.S. to signal the ball is “in,” but it means the ball is “out” in the UK. This led to a number of laughs as Terri navigated the “up is down” world of “in” meaning “out,” but she’s now part of a group of regular players that help her understand all kinds of unique British phrases well beyond pickleball.

I, too, have had similar experiences. On a recent trip to Quebec City, I met up with a fellow brand ambassador for Six Zero Pickleball and joined him for league play at his local facility. Despite all the other players only speaking French, the language barriers quickly melted away and we were soon celebrating good shots, laughing at poor ones, and congratulating the victors like old friends who play together every week. Afterwards, we enjoyed going to a coffee shop and getting to know each other a bit better. We even left with two of them hoping to come visit Sequim to play at Carrie Blake Park and meet many of the Sequim Picklers.

While travelling with your pickleball paddle may not seem like an intuitive way to meet people, make friends, and experience the local culture, you can see it provides a variety of rewarding ways to do so.