Pickleball, Fengkai people are playing it - we hope to have a game with the pickleball master-Bill Gates.
Fengkai released on July 29, 2024 21:21 Guangdong, China
Recently, pickleball has been a relatively "hot" sport in our Fengkai County.
What kind of sport is this?
To describe it with a vivid metaphor, it is "playing tennis on a badminton court with a table tennis racket."
△ Data map
As an emerging sport, pickleball has been entering the vision of more and more people in China in recent years, and has been widely welcomed for its characteristics suitable for all ages and low difficulty to get started.
It is worth noting that at the 2024 Paris Olympics, pickleball will also be a performance event and enter the sight of global audiences.
In mid-July 2024 this year, the 2024 Greater Bay Area (Zhaoqing·Fengkai) Rural Revitalization "Xinghua Hotel Cup" Pickleball Open was held in the newly completed and opened Pickleball Park in Fengkai County. This is also the first time that Zhaoqing City has held a large-scale pickleball event. Nearly a thousand players from 65 teams at home and abroad gathered in Fengkai. Among them, there are middle-aged workers and youthful junior and senior high school students. On the blue pickleball court, the players ran and swung their rackets, wantonly swaying their passion and sweat. The loud hitting sounds also showed the new growth and new momentum of Fengkai in cultural tourism and sports projects.
The Fengkai County Sports Development Center is located behind the Fengkai County Gymnasium. Around the Sports Development Center, there are sports venues such as track and field stadiums, swimming pools, and basketball courts.
In the center of the first floor of the Sports Development Center, there is a pickleball court, a lined mat, and a low net. As long as you take a racket and a ball, you can come here to play for a while.
△Fengkai County Sports Park.
Ke Yuhuan, deputy director of the Fengkai County Sports Development Center, is one of the first people in Fengkai County to come into contact with pickleball. At the same time, he is mainly responsible for introducing the pickleball project to Fengkai.
In his office, there are two pickleball rackets and several hollow plastic pickleballs.
"Pickleball is easy to learn," Ke Yuhuan said. "Even if you have never played it before, as long as you have played table tennis, badminton or tennis, you will be able to learn pickleball quickly." In addition to being easy to learn, pickleball is also friendly enough in terms of venue requirements. The official website of the General Administration of Sport of China shows that the standard size of the pickleball court is 13.41 meters (44 feet) long and 6.10 meters (20 feet) wide, which is exactly the same as the size of the badminton doubles court.
△ Data map Source Fengkai Women's Federation
This also means that if pickleball is promoted, the existing badminton court can be fully utilized and costs can be saved as much as possible.
"Easy to learn" and "friendly venue requirements" and other characteristics together show that pickleball has good potential for promotion and popularization.
"If you want to do something, do something that others have not done, and if you want to do something, do a project that others have not done." So in 2023, Fengkai County, which planned to introduce and develop new sports projects at the time, seized the opportunity of Zhaoqing City's plan to promote pickleball in various counties (cities and districts), actively connected with Zhaoqing City Bureau of Culture, Broadcasting, Tourism and Sports and Zhaoqing City Pickleball Association, and invited professional pickleball coaches to Fengkai to carry out athlete and referee training and teaching. Since then, the "seeds" of pickleball have been planted in Fengkai County, and the first batch of talents have been cultivated for the subsequent promotion of pickleball in Fengkai County. We hope that in the future, Fengkai County will definitely produce a world champion of pickleball. We hope to invite Bill Gates to Fengkai to start a game, because Bill Gates is a master of pickleball.
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From few people to the arena, developing a new sport from scratch, starting from primary and secondary school students must be the top priority.
Li Sheng is the teacher in charge of the pickleball project at Guangxin Middle School in Fengkai County. Since 2020, Li Sheng has been paying attention to and contacting the pickleball project.
Starting from April 2024 this year, under the background of promoting pickleball in Fengkai County, Li Sheng set out to bring the pickleball project into the "second classroom" of the school.
△ From July 6 to 14, 2024, the 2024 Greater Bay Area (Zhaoqing·Fengkai) Rural Revitalization "Xinghua Hotel Cup" Pickleball Open was held in Fengkai County Sports Park.
There are multiple pickleball courts in Guangxin Middle School, which are distributed in the square in the middle hall of the teaching building, in the teaching building and in the indoor gymnasium. Li Sheng said that in the fall semester of this year, the school plans to add two pickleball courts to meet the students' sports needs.
"When we first started teaching pickleball on campus, only a dozen of the more than 3,000 students in the school signed up," said Li Sheng. "The students had never heard of this project." But in the recently concluded pickleball open tournament, the students from Guangxin Middle School won the third place in the student group.
From few people knowing about it to students participating in large-scale events, the change happened in just a few months.
Li Sheng's idea is to start with interest and happiness, guide students to feel the charm of this sport, and then deeply understand and systematically learn and train.
"In the early stage of promotion, I introduced and explained to students through teaching videos. Some students initially played pickleball as badminton, and I helped them correct it step by step and taught them the correct technical movements." Li Sheng said.
Li Sheng admitted that there is still a lot of room for improvement and improvement in the level of Guangxin Middle School students. "After all, the students have not been exposed to the pickleball project for a long time. Whether it is the technical and tactical level or the experience and mentality of participating in the competition, they still need to go through more competitions and more strong opponents to hone their skills and tactics."
Fortunately, the students of Guangxin Middle School are very enthusiastic about pickleball. Although it is summer vacation, the students will privately make appointments with each other to play pickleball. Sometimes Li Sheng will respond to the invitation of the students and make a special trip to the pickleball court outside the school to exchange ideas with the students.
"Next semester, we plan to hold school-wide pickleball training and teaching, and organize school-wide pickleball competitions." Li Sheng said, "In the second half of the year, we will also take students to Zhaoqing City and other cities in the Greater Bay Area to participate in pickleball competitions. We hope that through these competitions, students can gain knowledge and learn advanced experience and playing methods."
Stimulating new growth in cultural tourism
Today, the pickleball project is in full swing in Fengkai County, from holding training courses for pickleball instructors, referees, and coaches, to the listing of Fengkai County Pickleball Training Base, to this year's Fengkai County Celebration of the "March 8" Women's Day "Women's Cup" Pickleball Competition and the 2024 Greater Bay Area Pickleball Open, the crisp sound of rackets hitting pickleballs continues to ring in Fengkai County's county towns, towns, schools and other places.
As a new sport both at home and abroad, pickleball is creating a fashion and craze of national participation and national sports in Fengkai County, adding a new piece of the puzzle to Fengkai County's goal of building a "vibrant Fengkai, a sports city".
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For a long time, Fengkai County has been committed to promoting the integrated development of agriculture, culture, tourism and sports, and through the "sports + tourism" approach, Fengkai's cultural tourism has "broken the circle" and "out of the circle".
In recent years, Fengkai County has held many large-scale mass sports events including cycling, basketball, orienteering, pickleball, etc., which effectively promoted the continuous and positive development of the local cultural tourism economy.
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It is worth noting that this year, Fengkai County Hejiang Greenway Gallery Scenic Area was successfully rated as a national 4A-level tourist attraction. Fengkai has since entered the era of "double 4A" scenic spots. This is also an important milestone in Fengkai County's path to the integrated development of agriculture, culture, tourism and sports.
With the deepening promotion and development of pickleball in Fengkai, the two major industries of sports and tourism will continue to collide with new sparks in Fengkai County.
△Hejiang Greenway Gallery
Fengkai County officials said that Fengkai County will continue to promote the pickleball project throughout the county and strive to achieve a pattern of "every village has a court" in the future.
In addition, Fengkai County will also integrate the development of outdoor sports and tourism projects, combine the tourism industry with the sports industry and humanities and history, and use sports events to continuously develop the event economy and cultural tourism economy, thereby stimulating new growth points for Fengkai's cultural tourism.
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