OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — Many 20-year-olds spend their weekdays in a classroom. Zach Gonnering, though, spends his time traveling to pickleball tournaments and dinking with some of the best players in the country.
“It was just kind of a thing that popped up in my life while training for another sport. Then, it just kind of became like, ‘This is really fun, super addicting. I want to do this every day,’” Gonnering said.
Gonnering went from running cross-country and playing basketball at Bay Port to becoming the No. 3 pickleball player in Wisconsin and ranking in the top 20 nationally for men 23 and under.
He takes online classes because of the constant training and traveling required for pickleball. But at first, he wasn’t a fan of the sport because, when he played basketball, the pickleball nets were on the court, getting in his way.
“I went back home to my parents and started complaining to them. I was like, ‘I hated the pickleball people,’” Gonnering said. “They just take over my court all the time and everything.”
His parents told him to join them, so Gonnering decided to try it out. After just one day, he caught the pickleball bug.
“I just wanted to get better. I got super hooked and started training pretty much four to six hours a day,” he said.
At first, Gonnering said, his friends didn’t understand the hype around the sport.
“They were like, ‘Oh, it's just an old people's sport. No young people really play it.’ So a lot of my friends actually became pickleball friends who are older, and it was super fun to just meet the community. It's such a good community. Everybody's super nice to each other.”
In 2020, the majority of players were ages 55 to 74. Now, more than 70% of players are between 18 and 44.
Gonnering has seen that shift firsthand.
“The growth has been incredible,” he said. “It used to be that parents would sign up kids for things like tennis. Now, it’s going to be parents signing up kids for pickleball. It’s just going to keep getting younger and younger.”
So if he weren’t playing pickleball right now, what would he be doing?
“I don’t know. That’s a good question. I actually don't know what my life would be without pickleball. It’s just my whole life.”
Gonnering hopes younger players continue to try pickleball, and he hopes to keep climbing the national rankings.
