Looking the part from head to toe, as if she's played the sport for half of her life, pre-teen Astrid Gills summed up her first pickleball experience in two words:

"It's fun," said the Grade 7 Mission Hill Elementary student. Decked out in pickleball wear, including a visor hat, Gillis expanded on her first try at a sport that has gripped the world over the past decade.

"It's not that competitive, which I like because I don't like being competitive," she said.

Gillis' fellow Grade 7 peer Aislynn Jewell, from cross-town Harwood Elementary, envisions herself being a pickleball player later in life.

"It's a super-fun sport, it's really competitive, and you get to move around a lot," said Jewell. "It's really high-energy."

Andrew Ellis, in Grade 7 at Mission Hill, would recommend the sport to other elementary kids.

"It's definitely a good learning experience, especially for the kids who are just a bit older," he said. "It's a good way to stay active, so I'd recommend it."

The trio were among close to 100 students from Mission Hill and Harwood schools who invaded the Vernon Pickleball Association (VPA) courts for a 90-minute program-ending event, courtesy of the host VPA and its volunteers.

The event, termed 'Slamboree,' was the conclusion of a six-week introduction to the sport, which also included Alexis Park Elementary.

"Part of the process with this is to introduce pickleball as a curriculum sport in the schools," said VPA president of player development, Rick Klein.

"This is just part of a much larger program that has been started over the last couple of years. It actually began in East Vancouver with a number of retired teachers who thought that getting pickleball in front of K to 7 students would be great and then try to get it in as a curriculum sport."

The VPA received grant money from Via Sport BC which allowed them to get equipment together for the kids use. The equipment will then go to the schools so they can run the programs with the support of the local 1,200-member association, which sees growth potential for its own organization, and in getting numerous schools involved in the sport over the next couple of years.

The reaction from the kids and the teachers, said Klein, has been fantastic. More than 100 kids engaged in an activity in one place at one time. 

The pickleball sessions have also dispelled a perceived myth that the sport is only for "old people."

"There is some to that for sure. When I first started, that's what I heard," laughed Klein. "When I got down here to play, I realized that pickleball is something older people can play. It's not an old person sport. As you get better at it, the competition gets harder, and we realize that the grassroots movement is trying to get kids involved.

"It's super important for a variety of reasons. You introduce the kids to another sport that the teachers have. The teachers have to be able to encourage their kids to be active. It's also a family thing. So we've got the kids, they're going to take this home to their parents and say, 'Guess what I did today?' There's just such a large movement that can happen with this."

Asked about the volunteers having as much fun as the students, Klein's face beamed like he was demonstrating the game to the kids.

"This is what we do, this is all part of it," he said. "You see the smiles and the enjoyment from the kids, it's terrific.

"It gives us great satisfaction to know that we're not just a pickleball club. That community footprint, what we do, how we are perceived out there. It's important. We've got a 1,200 member club here with such a variety of members with so many skill sets that we're able to produce this kind of thing and bring everybody out and show that off."