Nobody Here Has to Be the Best

There's a moment that happens a lot around open play. A parent brings a kid in, settles in to watch, and then someone waves them onto the court. They hesitate. "Oh, I'm not any good." A few minutes later they're laughing at their own missed shot, and nobody minds, least of all them.

That hesitation is worth talking about, because it keeps a lot of grown-ups on the sidelines. And the research says the thing that matters most isn't being good.

Why people actually play

The Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) tracks American sports participation every year. Its 2026 team sports report found that team sports reached a record 92.3 million participants in 2025, up 7.6% and the fifth straight year of growth. Seventeen of the 24 team sports it tracks grew.

What's more telling is why people play. When SFIA asked, the top answers were:

• Fun (58.4%)
• Staying active (51.0%)
• Time with friends (39.1%)
• Being part of a team (36.0%)

Competition came in at 26.1%, well down the list.

That doesn't mean competition is bad. Plenty of people love it, and we love hosting it. But for most players, winning isn't the point. Fun, movement and other people are.

Pickleball is the proof

If you want to see "nobody has to be the best" in action, watch a pickleball court. SFIA's 2026 pickleball report found 24.3 million Americans played in 2025, up from 4.2 million in 2020, and it has been the fastest-growing sport in the country for five years running.

It also isn't just a retiree sport anymore. Teens and young adults ages 13 to 24 now have the highest participation rates of any age group, and women make up 42.9% of players, up from 38.6% in 2020. It's one of the few games where a grandparent, a parent and a teenager can share a court and all have a good time.

The reason is simple: it's easy to start, it's social, and you can be a beginner without feeling like one for long.

What it does for your head

There's a mental health side to this too. In 2018, researchers from Yale and Oxford published one of the largest studies on the question in The Lancet Psychiatry, analyzing survey data from more than 1.2 million U.S. adults.

People who exercised reported 1.49 fewer days of poor mental health per month (about 43% fewer) than otherwise similar people who didn't. Every type of exercise was linked with a lower mental health burden, and popular team sports had the largest association, about 22% lower, ahead of cycling and gym workouts. The best results showed up around 45-minute sessions, three to five times a week, and more wasn't always better.

A fair note: the study shows an association, not proof of cause and effect, and the authors called for more research. Still, it's a big, encouraging signal, and it lines up with what you'd guess from watching people leave a pickup game. They usually look better than when they walked in.

Under one roof

At Community Fieldhouse, our courts switch between basketball, volleyball and pickleball, and there's a ping-pong table a few steps from the bar seating. On any given week you'll find local leagues and teams who rent space, private groups and open play, where anyone with a day pass or membership can just show up.

That mix is the point. The kid in the select practice and the parent who hasn't touched a ball in fifteen years are welcome in the same building, on the same night.

If you've been on the sidelines

• Start where you are. A beginner is a perfectly good thing to be.
• Bring someone. Time with friends is one of the top reasons people play, and it makes showing up easier.
• Aim for regular, not heroic. A few sessions a week is plenty.
• Play alongside your kids. They'll remember you playing a lot longer than they'll remember the score.

Nobody here has to be the best. You just have to want to play.

Sources

• SFIA, 2026 U.S. Trends in Team Sports: Participation Foundational Data one-pager (2026)
• SFIA, 2026 Pickleball Single Sport Report (June 2026)
• Chekroud SR, et al., Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1.2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: a cross-sectional study, The Lancet Psychiatry (2018)