Emerson Hebel was supposed to be in her Film As Literature class Thursday watching “The Godfather.” But instead, the Naperville North High School senior found herself taking her very first pickleball lesson.
“I’d rather be doing this for sure,” the 17-year-old said as she practiced serving with her pickleball partner and friend, Rhyse Filip. “I’ve played a little bit of pickleball before, but just like with my family, so it’s fun to like actually learn how to do it.”
The pair were joined not only by their peers at Naperville North, but also by students at West Aurora High School, Lisle High School, Lockport High School and home school students, who were playing at Sure Shot Pickleball in Naperville.
And now those hundreds of students — brought together by Naperville-based nonprofit KidsMatter — get bragging rights to say they were part of Guinness World Records’ largest simultaneous pickleball lesson.
To qualify for the achievement, more than 250 people had to participate in a 30-minute pickleball lesson. They ended up having 227 just from Naperville North alone, and 446 total.
“I’m happy there’s an opportunity to break the Guinness World Record with other schools. … It shows that we’re willing to do something different,” Filip, 17, said.
The Naperville North junior said if she didn’t have the pickleball lesson today, she probably would have been getting extra help from her Spanish or math teachers.
“But I wanted to do something different because I don’t really do anything fun like this often at our school,” Filip said.
On top of that, her friend’s mom, Sherilyn Hebel, was the main organizer for the event.
“This has been a year in the making,” said Hebel, director of programs for KidsMatter.
Hebel said she wanted to do an activity around pickleball due to the sport’s accessibility and appeal to a wide audience.
“Pickleball is a sport that can be enjoyed by almost everyone,” she said. “It brings mental health fun. It can be played by the old, by the young, by the super athletic, by the not-so-athletic. It can be played free with so many free outdoor courts in our community.”
As a member of KidsMatter, she wanted to figure out a way to get as many people involved in this activity as possible.
“A seed was planted and then it just kept getting watered and watered and it was, ‘How can we (use) pickleball to bring the community together?’ and then, ‘How can we make it even more fun? How can we engage our partners at our area schools? How can we engage our community locations,’” she said.
Then Hebel had an idea: why not try to make it a Guinness World Record attempt?
“Sherilyn approached me about the idea of doing the world’s largest pickleball lesson … and we thought it’d be a good idea to get a lot of different schools as well as our community together,” said John Fiore, chair of Naperville North’s Wellness Department.
Thursday’s lesson was taught by Joe Canda, a coach at Sure Shot Pickleball. While Canda was physically located at Sure Shot, he taught the lesson to the other students over Zoom. At Naperville North, he was projected onto a screen in the gym as he gave students tips and tricks on proper pickleball techniques.
“Dinking is a very short shot that sets up other shots in pickleball,” he said during the lesson. “If you come take a class with me, I teach all of my students we’re going to hit it soft to be able to hit it hard, and the dink is what sets up that shot.”
While students at Naperville North did not have a net to practice with, they did have balls and paddles — just enough to let them practice the game’s fundamentals. Some of the students at Naperville North tried to mimic the coach’s actions, working on their technique, while other appeared to be more focused on hitting the ball to their friend as hard as possible.
“(Canda) had not ever done anything like this before but I will tell you from the first moment I asked him, he was all in,” Hebel said.
And the energy he had during the lesson was everything Hebel could have asked for.
“Holy smokes, he was motivating those kids, he was demonstrating, he was a phenomenal instructor,” she said.
Putting together the lesson was not easy, Hebel said, noting the extensive coordination that was required between the different community partners and Guinness World Records. But in the end, it was all worth it, she said.
“It was amazing to see what the planning had done, come to fruition,” Hebel said. “We worked really hard to make a lesson that wouldn’t have pickleballs flying all over the place … of course we had some stray balls here and there, but for the most part, the kids were able to do controlled hits and really followed the lesson.”
cstein@chicagotribune.com
