Social work students and faculty play pickleball with positivity
A pickleball tournament between social work students and professors may be the least stressful sporting event you’ll ever witness.
They may talk a big game about how they want to crush the competition but in the end it’s all kumbaya and kindness. After all, these are professional and soon-to-be professional social workers and they are full of empathy and compassion. They can’t help it. Their trash talk is delivered with buoyant smiles.
Earlier this month, on reading day, 24 students and professors from the College of Health and Human Services’ Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) program participated in a pickleball tournament on the courts of Belk Gym. Using paddles, balls and nets provided by University Recreation, 12 teams competed in a double elimination tournament where the winners walked away with a prize pack consisting of headbands and holiday-pickleball-themed hand towels, one of which read: “Deck the halls with pickleballs.”
The tournament was the brainchild of two pickleball-playing professors (try saying that three times fast). Clinical Associate Professor and BSW Program Director Roger Suclupe, LCSW, and Assistant Professor Travis Scheadler, Ph.D., envisioned the tournament as a lively way to engage with students outside the classroom.
“The tournament provided students and faculty with a way to connect that wasn’t academic,” Suclupe said. “It was about building community.”
The professors kept things casual. There was no official referee or scorekeeper, the teams took on those tasks themselves, and Scheadler was in charge of creating the brackets. Most teams consisted of a faculty member and a student but because students outnumbered faculty, some teams were made up of two students.
BSW senior Chase Minor was paired with Scheadler for the tournament. “Being out here today and seeing people not just as professors but as whole people who have whole lives and like doing fun things is enriching,” Minor said. After she graduates in May, Minor plans to apply to graduate school and ultimately become a hospice social worker.
“It’s a nice way to spend time with students, especially those from the online program who we don’t see face to face,” said Associate Professor Annelise Mennicke, Ph.D. who played pickleball for the first time at the tournament. “It’s good to let students know we’re humans and vice versa and to just have fun together at the end of the semester when things are really stressful.”
BSW senior Taylor Reilly, who was paired with Suclupe, plays pickleball frequently. “Team work and communication are really important in pickleball and those qualities are important in social work as well,” Reilly said. After graduation, Reilly plans to attend graduate school and then work with homeless services.