Latest news with #NationalPickleballMonth
Wales Online
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have golden rule to make legendary tennis marriage work
Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf have golden rule to make legendary tennis marriage work Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi enjoyed incredible tennis careers and have dominated the sport of pickleball in recent years while now sharing the secret behind their success on and off the court Tennis legends Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf are still going strong both on and off the court (Image: Getty ) Tennis legends Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi have revealed the golden rule they follow to make their marriage work. The couple are widely considered to be among the greatest tennis players the sport has ever seen. Graf's career from 1982 to 1999 saw her win a whopping 22 Grand Slams, being the only player ever to clinch each of the majors at least four times. In 2001, the German married men's tennis icon Agassi, who himself won eight Grand Slams with his scintillating play between 1986 and 2006. The couple have gone on to have two children, 23-year-old son Jaden Gil Agassi and 21-year-old daughter Jaz Elle. Now, a quarter of a century into their marriage, a key part of Agassi and Graf's relationship is the increasingly popular sport of pickleball. The two 55-year-olds began playing pickleball with their kids during the Covid-19 lockdowns in the spring of 2020 and have been hooked ever since. Graf admitted that the sport, which is similar to tennis but is played on a doubles badminton court, 'filled a huge' tennis-shaped gap in their lives post-retirement. And she revealed the one key reason that they have been able to sustain their marriage while competing. She said in an interview with BILD: 'We don't play against each other. We prefer to be on the same side of the court.' Agassi added: 'We like that pickleball is a community-oriented sport. People who play pickleball also improve quickly.' He went on to say: 'We really want to spread the game. When we're not traveling, we practice a lot of pickleball. Since we both play, it's fun to do it together.' On Saturday, April 12, Agassi hosted the first-ever Agassi Open Play Day at Life Time Green Valley to mark National Pickleball Month. The event was also mirrored at more than 100 Life Time athletic clubs around the United States at the same time. Earlier this year, Agassi and Graf defended their Pickleball Slam crown by winning the title for a third successive time. Jaz Agassi, Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Jaden Agassi pose on the court after Andre Agassi and Graf won the Pickleball Slam 3 championship in Las Vegas (Image: Getty ) They teamed up against former US Open champion Andy Roddick and Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard, winning the $1million (£743,000) prize after three matches and a tiebreak round. Article continues below When Agassi and Graf aren't playing pickleball, they enjoy spending time with their kids and their respective partners, even going on triple dates. Agassi said: 'We had a great date night the other night where it was me, Steffi, my son and Catherine, his girlfriend, and Jaz, our daughter, and her boyfriend Parker, and it was like a triple date and we all just went out and sat and talked. 'We feel like peers around them, we respect them, we seek their opinion on things, they're not hesitant to ask us our perspective on what they're going through, so it really feels like a healthy season in life.'
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
We are drenched in educational rankings. But at what cost?
This is the time of the year when educational statistics and rankings scream for our attention, Eric Thomas writes. (Illustration by Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector) Lace up your court shoes because April is National Pickleball Month. It's also — apparently — National Afternoon Tea Month, National Brunch Month and National Canine Fitness Month. So maybe you should be playing pickleball with Fido before a brunch date and afternoon tea? Today I am petitioning for a new designation for April: it's National School Statistics Month. This is the time of the year when educational statistics and rankings scream for our attention. For our uniquely American media that rank schools against each other, it's also the moment to pit business schools against each other and even teachers against each other. As Fido knows, it's a dog eat dog world. In the upcoming days, high school seniors who have been accepted at a few different universities will choose their home for next year. They will consider the rank of one school against another: 'Should I go to the No. 159 school in the nation because they are providing a greater scholarship than the No. 102 school in the nation?' Meanwhile, rising juniors and seniors in high school are consulting rankings and lists to map out their college visits this summer and fall. The most popular months for parents to move houses, according to multiple moving companies, are during the summer. (Welcome to National Moving Month in a few days when May begins!) Parents will be consulting school rankings, graduation rates and student-teacher ratios. Choosing a new neighborhood is really about choosing the best neighborhood elementary school. April is also a common month for students choosing a course schedule for next fall. While some college students choose classes based on personal or professional interests, they also are scouting the professors and teachers who typically teach each course. Who gives the most homework? Whose class would you take again? The internet will give you those answers too. The trouble with all of these rankings, as they compare schools who are wildly different, is the air of certainty that they promise. Consider the statistical precision offered by certifying one high school as the No. 1 school over a No. 2 school. Let alone — gasp! — a No. 7 school. Even with the many algorithms, reviews and databases that ranking services promise to employ, the rankings are often misleading. College instructors share a queasy feeling when this website gets mentioned. Those who are bold enough to log on to quickly get the feeling that they are a plate of fries being reviewed on Yelp! ('Too salty indeed!') What insights does provide from University of Kansas students who previously took my courses? 3 out of 5 for quality, 3 out of 5 for difficulty: 'Eric Thomas was a good but not great professor. Had some meh moments but also some fun ones.' 5 out of 5 for quality, 2 out of 5 for difficulty: 'MY KING. its (sic) a big class and you get put in a random group and that group will grade you at the end of the quarter but most of you (sic) grade is daily group class work and tests. GREAT GUY' 4 out of 5 for quality, 4 out of 5 for difficulty: 'Hes (sic) alright' Clearly, I need to teach a bit more grammar. And need to elevate my 'meh' energy. Yesterday during office hours, a student told me she had been unsure about registering for my class. In the end, she said she signed up for it only after scrolling those reviews. I'm wondering which glowing (or angry) review hooked her. The website provides a preposterous sample, of course. After teaching more than 2,000 students during 11 years at KU, 43 have left these curt reviews summing up 16 weeks in my class with a few syllables. I can't argue that students should trust other students because they often have smart observations. But as any instructor knows, the students who drench you in feedback are usually the A+ achievers who loved your class, or the students who failed and see the rating as a chance to exact revenge. Hence, a 2023 review of me: 'When you talk to him in private, he could not possibly care less about you.' Ouch. We can be grateful for the progress that no longer uses 'hotness' as a part of their rating system. For years, students used the site's infamous chili pepper to rate the attractiveness and wardrobe of their instructors. Thankfully, that yucky metric fell away in 2018. And yes, I did try to use the Wayback Machine to see if I could recall how many chili peppers I had earned. But alas, that metric is lost. (And yes, my vanity score just skyrocketed. How many mirrors did I earn?) This week, the Kansas City Star relayed rankings from the educational website Niche. The headline promises empirical certainty: 'These 15 high schools are some of the highest ranked in the KC area for 2025.' The results are summarized with the top 10 overall schools, according to the website, which boasts: 'Niche has the most comprehensive data on U.S. schools and neighborhoods. We rigorously analyze dozens of public data sets and over 100 million reviews and survey responses to help you understand what a place is really like.' I am not convinced. The data are opaque to visitors. Average ACT and SAT test scores are reported — but it's unclear when students achieved these scores. The website summarizes the 'Culture & Safety' of some schools with as few as 10 survey responses for a particular school. To trust a website like this — and report its findings as fact — demands more transparency. Whether you trust them or not, the rankings tout suburban schools that hug the Kansas-Missouri state line as being the 10 best. Half of the schools are private and charge more than $15,000 per year. It's a mash-up of schools from affluent areas charging more than $50,000 for a high school education. They should be good. That being said, I have personally visited each of these schools, and they are excellent — but in totally different ways. It's laughable to rank them, from a private high school with fewer than 200 students to a public high school with more than 1,700 students, this bluntly. U.S. News and World Report invented both the folly and fortune of these college rankings. Each September, their rankings trumpet the best universities in the nation while dunking on others. (Today's teens shopping for colleges aren't likely to know that U.S. News and World Report was once a magazine you saw many places, but mostly in doctor's and dentist's offices.) Other publications have responded with rankings to rival and mock the lists from U.S. News and World Report. In its 20th year, Washington Monthly released its rankings, calling them 'our answer to U.S. News and World Report, which relies on crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige. We rank liberal arts colleges — four-year institutions that award almost exclusively bachelor's degrees and that focus on arts and sciences rather than professional programs — based on their contribution to the public good.' The numbers are right there, as transparent as we readers would hope. And the mission is precise. Rather than trying to summarize the entirety of a university, the staff hopes to evaluate 'social mobility, research, and promoting public service.' If those are your values, the rankings suggest, these are your metrics. Washington Monthly goes further, providing even more specific rankings, 'America's Best and Worst Colleges for Women in STEM.' According to the rankings, Fort Hays State University is the second worst in the country in graduating women with a chemistry degree and 10th worst in graduating women with a biology degree. Wichita State's electrical engineering ranks near the bottom of that discipline with only 8.6 of graduates who are female. I wish that I could report that any Kansas schools achieved spots on the 'best' list. The ruthlessly narrow goal of these rankings is admirable. Washington Monthly is saying: 'We will put a specific band of statistics in context for you. We can't tell you everything about a university, but you can trust us on this.' The publication's humility and focus are rare in the business of publishing educational rankings. It's hard to be humble when everyone wants to be No. 1. Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
April is National Pickleball Month
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — In today's health headlines, April is National Pickleball Month. We're talking about common injuries and how to avoid them. Yale Medicine sports medicine Doctor Stephanie Schmidt, an assistant professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation at Yale School of Medicine, joined Good Morning Connecticut at 9 a.m. to discuss. Watch the video above to learn more. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Rockford pickleball club unites community for socializing and staying active
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — A rainy spring day did not stop a group of Rockford residents from coming together to socialize and play a game they love. 'You make great friends that you would never meet anywhere else,' said Tom Rondone. Those who gathered at the UW Health Sports Factory are part of a growing club that organizes and plays Pickleball throughout the year. 'So there's somebody who has all of our emails, you know, we give it to him, and then he says, 'We're going to play this day,' said Allen Steely. 'They also then on birthdays, people bring cookies and things. So it is a social club as well.' April is National Pickleball Month, and it has been the fastest-growing sport in America for 4 years running. Steely said the sport's popularity is due to its benefits for those who are retired. 'Right after I retired at age 66, then I started to play,' said Steely. 'You make new friends, and there's many different places to play in town… It's also great exercise for older people to keep your heart [and] your lungs in shape.' A fellow member feels the same way when it comes to playing the sport. 'You adapt to a certain group of friends, and you become very close,' said Dean Russell. The health benefits of playing keep Russell on the court. 'I've been diabetic for 38 years. It's to keep moving so I don't get complications from diabetes,' Russel explained. 'It's just expanding, and I will never meet people that good [of] friends from out of town.' According to USA Pickleball, 4,000 new courts were added nationwide in 2024. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Hawaii Pacific Health ESPN Honolulu Open brings pickleball fever to the islands
HONOLULU (KHON2) — Pickleball enthusiasts, mark your calendars! The Hawaii Pacific Health ESPN Honolulu Open, the largest pickleball tournament in Hawaii, is set to take over the Hawaii Convention Center from April 10 to April 13. A peek at Hawaiʻi's 2 most expensive estates With over 800 tournament players and 55 corporate teams competing for the coveted Corporate Cup, this event is a celebration of the nation's fastest-growing sport. 'We're thrilled to host Hawaii's largest indoor pickleball tournament,' said Donna Ching, president of the Oahu Pickleball Association. 'There will be more than 30 courts on the convention center's ground floor, providing an incredible experience for players and spectators alike.' Not a pickleball pro? No problem! The event will feature clinics for those eager to learn the sport, including sessions led by top pickleball pros Morgan Evans and Jessie expo will also offer fans the chance to explore the latest gear and connect with the pickleball community. 'It's a fantastic opportunity for anyone curious about pickleball to get involved,' said Dean McColgan, Board Chair of the Oahu Pickleball Association. 'Whether you're cheering on a friend or discovering a new passion, there's something for everyone.' The Hawaii Pacific Health ESPN Honolulu Open is made possible by its sponsors. Hawaii Pacific Health serves as the title sponsor, with HMSA as the presenting sponsor. 'April is National Pickleball Month, and we couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than with this tournament,' Ching added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
