From the lab to the pickleball court: Team LaRC Labs wins Intramural Sports tournament

Campus Recreation’s Intramural Sports program offers a wide variety of team and individual sports through organized leagues and tournaments. The leagues are not exclusively for students — faculty and staff can play, too — but the majority of teams are made up of students. This semester however, one team comprised of a faculty member and student, LaRC Labs, took home the winning rights to the Intramural Pickleball Tournament.

Professor Kenneth J. Kurtz, director of the Learning and Representation in Cognition Lab (LaRC Labs), and his graduate student researcher Mercury Mason took the crown. Housed in the Psychology Department, LaRC Labs focuses on the study of cognitive and brain science.

But how did the duo get from the research lab to the pickleball court?

“I’ve been playing pickleball for a few years. It’s a great sport. It’s very fun and it was exciting to see an opportunity to play on campus,” Kurtz said. “To admit it, I frequently talk about the joys of pickleball. When I tell someone about it and they sound interested, I get them out there [on the court]; I recruit them. Mercury is my graduate student and I was teaching him about pickleball at the lab, so we partnered up for the tournament.”

While Kurtz is a regular pickleball player, Mason was still pretty new to the sport.

“I don’t know much about pickleball, but it’s really nice to be active,” said Mason. “It’s a nice way to decompress and get some physical fitness in my life. The competitiveness is a little fun and to come out on top was a great feeling.”

Being relatively new as a team, the pair didn’t have any expectations for the tournament.

“You don’t really know what to expect for these tournaments. We had participated in a pickleball league over the summer with the Intramural Sports program, and that was really fun,” Mason said. “When the program director asked for our sizes for the champion T-shirts, I thought he was joking. I thought that was a joke.”

It wasn’t a joke: LaRC Labs won the spring semester Pickleball Tournament as part of Campus Recreation’s Intramural Sports program.

“The experience all depends on whoever shows up to play. It can be athletic and competitive or it can be recreational and casual, and anything in between,” said Kurtz. “The game is kind of addictive and it’s really rewarding. We would like to play as much as we can. I read somewhere it’s the fastest growing sport in the U.S. I believe more people will be picking it up and they’re charmed about [pickleball]. We want to do whatever to help others know about pickleball on campus.”

The fun and social sport is simple and easy to learn. It combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping-pong and can be played as doubles or singles. Not only is it one of the fastest growing sports in the United States and Canada, many European and Asian countries are adding pickleball courts as well.

In addition to the leagues and tournaments offered by Campus Recreation’s Intramural Sports program, the department also offers introductory pickleball classes as part of the “Find Your Fit” program. The Find Your Fit series of classes is designed to help students, faculty, staff and retirees learn something new or rediscover something they love, at no extra cost.

The Binghamton University community is also welcome to use the newly marked pickleball lines on one of the recreational tennis courts, located behind the Rec Center at the East Gym. The project, which was completed in late 2021, was in response to the growing demand for more dedicated pickleball spaces on campus.