Hudef Sport

  By  Matthew Schwartz  Jill Thomas left California courtrooms for Portugal’s pickleball courts in 2022 - Jill Thomas chased gangs, cartels, terrorists and child predators in California for 12 and a half years. Now she’s chasing pickleballs. In Lisbon, Portugal. Thomas spent a life  in  courts before she was ever  on  a pickleball court. She was a federal prosecutor in Sacramento, a defense attorney, and a judge in the military. She’s an Air Force Reservist assigned to a base in Germany, where her time on duty is between 20 and 30 days a year. In early 2022, the 53-year-old native of Shelby Township, Michigan, and her wife, Jordan, moved to Lisbon. They had visited Portugal’s capital city just once before, in 2012. “We wanted an adventure in a European capital to use as a home base for travel,” Thomas told me. “Portugal is a friendly country to foreigners, the weather [is good], it’s a city with great public transportation, the ability to walk almost ...

  By   Matthew Schwartz   Lorraine marked the location of every court she played on  - Her story is, in a word, amazing. Like many of you, I try to read about pickleball as much as possible. A few months ago I read a post in a Facebook  pickleball  group that grabbed my attention. A woman wrote about her dream of playing at least one  pickleball  game in all 50 states. I said to myself,  Now this is a story that should be told to everyone who not only loves  pickleball , but has a goal they think they cannot reach. Maybe it will inspire someone, whether they play pickleball or not. I pitched the piece to my boss at  Pickleball Magazine.  She loved it and it ran in the magazine’s September issue/October issue (for information on subscribing to the magazine go to  pickleball magazine.com ). The version that follows is similar but with some details that were not in the magazine story.      Lorraine (left) and f...