Pickleball, America’s fastest growing sport, faces a noise problem, and engineer Bob Unetich aims to help solve it.
The issue: Pickleball’s sharp, high-pitched noise has led to numerous lawsuits over its disturbing sound levels.
* Participation in the sport increased 85.7% year-over-year in 2022 and 158.6% over three years, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
Bob Unetich’s solution: Unetich, founder of Pickleball Sound Mitigation, researched and tested different materials for equipment and sound barriers to reduce noise levels.
* He and other engineers built a chamber to test various paddles by dropping balls at predictable speeds and measuring sound levels.
Looking ahead: The simplest solution may be to build courts farther away from people, but Unetich hopes his research and consultancy will address the noise issue and prevent it from slowing down pickleball’s growth.
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