Announcing Scores with ASL
A quick tutorial on using American Sign Language to call out pickleball scores.
Using American Sign Language to announce the score during a match has several advantages:
It allows for a more inclusive game by supporting collaboration between deaf and non-deaf players.
It overcomes the challenges of noisy courts — especially indoors — where echoes make it difficult to hear players announce the current score.
It is fun to learn a new language!
When I applied to be a be a USA Pickleball Ambassador, I stated that I wanted to help make this great sport more assessable to a wide-variety of peoples. I hope to do that with this series of posts.
This introductory post demonstrates how to count from 0 to 11 with ASL. These gestures are easily performed with one hand. With some repetition and practice, you’l be announcing scores in no time! My next post will cover numbers 11 through 21. This will be helpful for rally scoring or some of those looong matches that never seem to end.
Once the basics are mastered, I’ll recruit some friends to teach a word or phrase of the week. My goal is to learn one new pickleball-related word or phrase each week for six months. That’s 26 new phrases which will certainly increase our on court communication! I hope you join me for this journey.