SILER CITY — Move over, basketball.
Pickleball has claimed another convert, and his name is Siler City native Calvin Marsh.
Despite his previous protests, the gregarious Marsh can now be found on a regular basis swinging his pickleball paddle on a court somewhere in Chatham County. It’s one of four sports enjoyed by Marsh during the Chatham County Senior Games, which includes bowling and golf. Basketball shooting still has a place for the 1966 graduate of J.S. Waters, but Marsh has steadily put the seams of a basketball on the rack for the pop of a pickleball.
How did this high school basketball player of some 60 years ago get pulled away from his jump shot?
“I love basketball, and I’ll be in (a gym) shooting basketball sometimes,” Marsh said. “This one particular time, I was in there shooting.”
As Marsh described it, a neighboring pickleball game was seeking a fourth member to round out a doubles game. He was being pulled in, whether he knew it or not.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to play no pickleball!’” Marsh remembers. “They said, ‘Come on,’ and they convinced me to come and participate. As they taught me the rules and I became familiar with the rules, they taught me how to dink the ball.”
The same scenario played out in golf. At first, Marsh had no interest in picking up a club and watching his ball sail all over civilization. However this time, his cousin encouraged him to give it a try.
Now, Marsh is a four-sport athlete in Chatham County Senior Games and advanced to the state games in golf and basketball shooting. Chatham County Senior Games pickleball ambassador, Bill Alston, approached Marsh and asked why he didn’t participate in pickleball or basketball shooting.
While the touch never left his jump shot, it’s pickleball that commands most of Marsh’s attention these days.
“A lady told me the other day, ‘Calvin, you remember when you wouldn’t play pickleball with us? Now, we can’t run you out of the gym!’” he said.
Maintaining an active lifestyle has never been a problem for Marsh. In the face of holiday-eating opportunities and Super Bowl Sundays, Marsh tries not to take his weight over 150 pounds. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Marsh would rise at 6 a.m. and commence exercising. His time at a segregated Waters left him with no other option but to play basketball.
“When I was in high school, I played basketball,” Marsh said. “Basketball was the only thing I could play in high school because my school didn’t have nothing but basketball. They didn’t have baseball, a track team — they didn’t have nothing like that.”
His post-military life has him walking anywhere from four to five miles a day, a ritual he’s been keeping for the last half-century.
Marsh joined the Senior Games circuit in 2019 just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and returned once the games moved away from a virtual format.
Participation in Senior Games carries a welcome distraction for Marsh. As a Vietnam veteran, Marsh suffers from PTSD. Any sustained thoughts on what he witnessed overseas can be enough to prompt triggers. Indeed, every serve and effort to stay out of the pickleball “kitchen” helps to avoid flashbacks to that three-year time period where he served his country.
“A lot of these sports help me, and I can’t go but so far with this — I have flashbacks from Vietnam and I have nightmares,” Marsh said. “If I do things to keep my mind off it, it helps.”
On the battlefield, Marsh noted that there was no time for racism.
“We didn’t really have a problem with racism in the military,” he said. “Because in Vietnam, you’re trying to have your life saved or saving someone else’s life.”
Pickleball has helped Marsh understand the different backgrounds of others. The social nature of the game lends itself to an ideal he’d like to see more of away from the court.
“I just wish a lot of people could learn to get along together,” Marsh said. “Whether you’re Black, white, Hispanic, Asian or what. That’s one thing we need to work on. We need to work on people working together and getting along together.”