Pickleball could be one of 20 youth sports featured on American quarters starting in 2027, if it earns enough support from the public.

The U.S. Mint has commenced voting for its “Youth Sports” program, a four-year run of quarters that will be printed with 20 designs featuring a popular youth sport played in the United States. Survey respondents are asked to rank 58 sports — including pickleball — by how they might look on the back of a coin, ranging from “highly appealing” to “not at all appealing.”

Jeff Pritchard, nephew of pickleball founder and former state Lt. Gov. Joel Pritchard, believes that BI’s signature sport would look pretty good. While pickleball is renowned for its popularity among the senior community, it fits perfectly into the youth sports program too, he said.

“Pickleball appearing on quarters would really put Bainbridge ‘on the map.’ Since coins can survive or circulate for decades, it would really memorialize the sport for the foreseeable future,” Pritchard said. “And most importantly, since the quarter series is about ‘youth sports,’ it would introduce a whole new generation of players to the game and to keep kids active and healthy, as opposed to some of our more traditional sports, which don’t always resonate with today’s younger generation.”

Founders Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum created the sport in 1965 to placate some “rambunctious kids” who couldn’t find any badminton equipment one summer afternoon. Joel Pritchard brought the game with him to his political career in Olympia as lieutenant governor and encouraged congress members to play as a teambuilding exercise. It took over 50 years, but it was the fastest-growing sport in America from 2020-23, with public interest more than tripling. In 2022, former Gov. Jay Inslee named pickleball the official state sport of Washington.

Kids make up about a fifth of pickleball players in the U.S., of which there are up to 35 million. Schools around the nation have adopted the sport into their athletic curriculum since at least the 1990s.

“While kids love pickleball because it’s fun and easy to learn, it also provides aerobic exercise, improves hand-eye-coordination, teaches good sportsmanship, doesn’t take up a lot of space, and is relatively inexpensive,” Jeff Pritchard said.

“I think my favorite aspect of the sport is that one can become relatively proficient fairly quickly — proficient enough to have extended volleys and competitive games. Some other racquet sports can take quite a while to achieve even basic competence. That aspect opens pickleball up to a very wide range of participants.”

For those interested in voting go to www.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/youth-sports/