Pickleball Forever

Although she is 82 years old, Fay Brett isn’t playing in the most senior bracket in the upcoming US Open pickleball championship. The transplanted Kiwi, or New Zealand native, is scheduled to compete in the 80+ mixed doubles event, and there is another bracket reserved for players over 85.

Fay won silver in last year’s championship, held at East Naples Community Park, where it is taking place again this week, in the 4.0 over 80 singles division, but an issue with the online registration kept her from being able to register for the singles tourney this year. 

“The website screwed me around. I couldn’t sign up for singles,” she said, but maybe that was a blessing in disguise. “Doubles is easier on an 82-year-old body.” 

In a tune-up “friendly” match a week before she plays her tournament matches on April 20, Brett was the only female on the court, playing with partner Bob Berkstresser, 84, against two youngsters of 51 and 68. Even in a practice game, the volleys back and forth were intense, and the players were “in it to win it.” 

Berkstresser expressed great appreciation for his partner’s athleticism and competitive spirit. 

“She’s exceptional. Why do you think I chose her?” he asked. In mixed doubles, he said. “The guy is always superfluous. They think the woman is the weaker player – but not Fay. I call her Mighty Mouse or the Energizer Bunny.” Other pickleball players, taking off on the classic movie “King Kong,” dubbed her “Fay Wray,” but that hardly seems fair to Fay Brett, who is not one to swoon passively in the paws of a great ape. 

Brett’s partner from last year’s championship, Terry Nichols, a “younger man” at 81, said, “She’s very, very good. She runs faster than you’d believe.”  

Fay Brett has played pickleball for “almost 10 years,” she said, since about a year after the pickleball park in East Naples debuted, transitioning gradually from tennis. Conveniently for her, the nation’s premier pickleball facility is just three and a half miles from her home near Royal Harbor in Naples. 

She plays pickleball “every other day, and the days I don’t play, I walk,” she said – something like 6,000 steps. It’s not as though she is filling empty hours. Brett goes out in boats with Rookery Bay as a volunteer tagging sharks and recently encountered two endangered sawfish, an eight-footer and a 10-footer. She volunteers at Domestic Animal Services, works part-time doing office administration for a psychologist and another client, and “helping old people pay their bills and get stuff ready for the IRS.” Before the pandemic, she was also volunteering at Habitat for Humanity doing office work. 

She also belongs to the Naples Macintosh Users Group and the Genealogy Society of Collier County. “Oh, and I take care of five condos here while the people are gone for the summer.”

In previous positions, Brett’s work took her all over the U.S. as part of a film crew for an educational sports broadcaster and for seven years, up and down the Florida Keys with the Marine Research Foundation. 

Not content with what some, particularly some octogenarians, would consider a very full life, Brett regularly undertakes adventurous international travel. Recent years have seen her swimming with sharks and gray whales in Baja California, investigating 1,000-lb. Leatherback turtles in Trinidad and Tobago, touring Costa Rica – “we rappelled down a waterfall, and went ziplining,” and visiting Tanzania – “that was just a regular safari,” she said. 

One particular favorite was tracking mountain gorillas in Uganda, helping to raise donations for research. 

“We were within seven to 10 feet from the group. I saw this one little one get out of line, and his mama just whupped him upside the head,” said Brett - an effective correction even if not in keeping with the latest principles of parental discipline. 

Brett reflected on the odyssey that has taken her from New Zealand to England and Europe, then Toronto and Montreal, and finally, the United States. 

“I left when I was 20 years old for a gap year. We all did it in New Zealand and Australia.” In this country, a well-connected family that took her in managed to get a bill introduced in Congress, specifically authorizing her to stay in the U.S., which otherwise would not likely have been legally possible. 

“I keep busy. I’ve just been so fortunate,” said Fay. “I’ve had the most incredible life.”