Summer Games pickleball event a big hit at Little Valley

Written by Andy Griffin
June 12, 2016
Utah Summer Games Pickleball Tournament, June 11, 2016, | Photo by Robert Hoppie, ASPpix.com, St. George News

ST. GEORGE — Pickleball is still an emerging sport. In fact, around the world there’s a pretty good chance the average person has not even heard of the burgeoning pastime.

1usgBut in southern Utah, the sport is red-hot, as evidenced by the big numbers drawn to the Little Valley Pickleball Complex during the Utah Summer Games this weekend. The competition was fierce, not just for the older set, but for the younger players as well.

St. George News photographer Robert Hoppie was at the event and captured the photo gallery below.

The Utah Summer Games just completed its second week of competition and will continue until the end of next week.

With nearly 10,000 participants, the games, now titled the Larry H. Miller Utah Summer Games, are healthy and perhaps even growing.

The final week of events begins with Monday’s basketball skills competition at Cedar High and continues Thursday through Saturday with archery, baseball, arm wrestling, adult and youth team basketball, cycling, 3 X 3 soccer, table tennis, tae kwon do, track and field, trap shooting and ultimate frisbee. For more information, go to www.utahsummergames.org.

Email: sports@stgnews.com

Twitter: @oldschoolag

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2016, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Griffin has been in sports media since 1989 and has covered BYU, Utah State and the Utah Jazz as well as all sports in southern Utah. A journalism graduate of USU, Andy has carried on a dual career as both a sports writer and a sports broadcaster and has been heard around the country. He has also been published in USA Today, Sport magazine, The Sporting News, Fairways magazine, the Los Angeles Times and locally in the Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Spectrum. Andy was “The Voice of Region 9 sports,” for many years. He also hosted a daily sports talk show for three years called AG in the a.m. Andy has been married to his college sweetheart Shelly for 28 years and has five children ages 13 to 25.

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