91 and Serving: How Pickleball Keeps Mel Scott Active

All right, Tucker. Thank you. Well, who says age has to slow you down? At 91 years old, Mel Scott is still hitting the pickleball court. Get this, not once, not twice, but three times a week. And he also tells me he'd like to hit it more. He's here to share his secret to healthy aging. Mel, welcome to Good Day. We're glad to have you here with us. So glad to be here. Yes. So what's your secret? You're playing pickleball three times a week these days. Yeah, well, if I have a secret at all, it's because my entire life I've continued to play all kinds of sports. I just enjoy it. And when I retired, I moved to Cape Cod and I did a lot of stuff. I played softball, I biked, I hiked, and started to pickleball in 2012 when it was brought up from Florida. Most people were playing it down there. We played at the Cape. And so I started playing then. and I was 77 years old at that time when I started. Oh, my goodness. You were playing pickleball before it even became popular. Well, yeah, it became popular. I've been playing around since 1965. What benefits have you noticed from playing pickleball? Well, pickleball is a great game because it's a game where it's not hard on your body. It's not hard on your shoulders, your arms, your legs. You don't move that much, and you don't have to put a lot of strain on your elbows, and shoulders things like that so you can play it uh for as long as you can play it actually and i i've been i had no intention of stopping i know in fact like i said he wanted to say or you said that you would be willing to add more pickleball i would like to but they keep us pretty busy at the Carnegie so not everybody has mornings free to do that i see so you helped start the pickleball club at the Carnegie tell me about that i helped start actually i am not the the originator the originator the guy who started it his name was Howard Coven and howard had the the thought to ask uh the Carnegie to buy a pickleball net this was last winter and put it in the aerobics room we don't have room for a pickleball court but uh we brought people down in the winter to hit the ball over the net to show it how it's to show how it's played and i joined howard Howard was a singles player. I was a doubles player. I taught people how to play doubles and they got really interested in it. And when the weather got warm, we went outside and we played at a real pickleball court. I love that. And that's how it got started. That's fantastic. So obviously it helps keep you in shape physically at your age, but mentally, socially, talk to me a little bit about what you're noticing. It's a very, it's a very social sport and it's a very friendly sport. The games are short, 10, 15 minutes. There are, you don't have to be really a great athlete to play with in fact at the Carnegie i think over half the people who play are women are women actually so it's uh it's not a sport of strength necessarily but it keeps you active it keeps you going and and the way i feel about it uh if you want to continue going to a late age the best thing for you is to move whether it's playing pickleball whether it's just walking, whether it's going to the gym. I do all those things, but whatever you can do, you can do it. And it really helps you socially as well as physically, mentally, and it's fun. It really is fun. Yeah, such an inspiration you are. You know, Mel, I got to admit, I've never played pickleball before in my life. So any advice to people if they're just getting started? Yeah, the only advice I would give if you're my age and you want to start playing I would say it's okay but if you've never played a racket sport before maybe you want to think twice about it and also you have to understand in pickleball the ball doesn't bounce like a regular tennis ball so a lot of people lunge at the ball. And you'll find that orthopedics, orthopedic specialists find pickleball to be the biggest revenue producer for them. Pickleball injuries. Well, thank you for sharing your story and for inspiring so many folks at home to hopefully get out and enjoy life and continue to be active well into older age. Thank you so much. Thank you, Matt. We appreciate it. All right, Julie, I'll send it over to you. All right. Thank you from Pickleball.