Suzanne Herber is Headed Back to Nationals Years After her Dad Introduced her to Pickleball
Originally a tennis player, Herber began playing pickleball 15 years ago.
By Jen Mulson - Red Line Editorial
Suzanne Herber’s one pickleball regret is a good reminder to the rest of us.
Make sure you polish off your dreams before it’s too late.
The Broomfield, Colorado, resident never got to play a pickleball tournament with her father, Dave Kunze, a pickleball fanatic who once won a silver and bronze medals at the Senior Games.
He died in 2020 before they got the chance.
“Even though we played recreational pickleball together — he’d take me to his open plays — he was always like, ‘We’ve got to play a tournament together,” Herber said. “And I’d just had a baby and was like, ‘Yes, sure.’ You always think oh sure, we will. And we never did. I wish we would have.”
He also never got to see her play competitively.
“Which is a bummer,” she said. “But, I don’t know, maybe he’s watching me.”
If true, Kunze would surely have been cheering during the USA Pickleball Golden Ticket tournament held July 9-13 in Colorado Springs.
Herber won gold medals in her singles and doubles divisions, securing a spot for the USA Pickleball National Championships this November in San Diego.
It’s the second year in a row she’s qualified for Nationals.
Her dad coaxed her into the sport about 15 years ago after she moved back to Colorado. At first, she resisted. She admits she turned up her nose at the sport after playing tennis since she was 8 and making the varsity team as a freshman in high school.
But she finally relented, after much badgering from her father, who was already going gangbusters in the sport and winning awards.
“We’d play a little bit and he kept trying to get me to not do tennis tricks and to do pickleball shots,” Herber said. “Like just hitting it hard, not doing dinks or drop shots. But then I got into it. After he died, I wanted to do a tournament, and I used his paddle and played with a childhood friend. He had coached us both in soccer. And then we got the bug.”
They didn’t win, but that was no matter.
“You can go and play hard and have lost and it’s all good,” she said.
Her father, a former hockey player, found the sport later in life. He still wanted to be active, and tennis didn’t agree with his bad shoulder.
“Pickleball was what all the ex-athletes who had injuries were playing,” Herber said. “It’s interesting because physically it’s hard. And then he was hooked.”
Herber and her doubles partner — Rin Murphy of Erie, Colorado — meld well together on the court, Herber says. They both come from a tennis background, which gives them a similar athletic style and good intuition on the court.
“It’s something you can’t put into words,” Herber said. “You just feel it.”
They also use that intuition when it comes to strategizing against their opponents.
“We’re more instinctive players,” she said. “If we go in too much in our heads, that’s the kiss of death. So, we go in with our instincts and have to adjust as we’re playing depending on what our opponents are doing and if what we’re doing is not working. We just strategize on the fly.”
Herber has two ways to get physically conditioned for tournaments, one that’s fun and one that’s not so fun for her.
To prepare for doubles matches, she just plays a lot of doubles.
But for singles, she makes herself go to the gym, even though she “hates working out.” Her son even curated a weightlifting routine for her.
“For singles I did spend the winter trying to get conditioned because singles is really hard,” she said. “I feel like it’s harder than tennis. Because it seems like you have to hit so much harder. The court is smaller, but you run so much more.”
She loves that playing pickleball allows her to return to the glory days and joy of her youth when she played tennis.
“It’s reliving that a little bit,” she said. “And it’s having stiff competition, but it’s very friendly. Where I play, we have a huge community and it’s extremely competitive but it’s super fun. Everyone is supportive of one another and wants everyone to get better.”
Pickleball also infiltrates her romantic life. Last year she and her husband celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in Key West, Florida, where they’d spent their honeymoon.
Prior to their trip, she lost her wedding ring. And her engagement ring had been long gone, too. She lost it while playing pickleball in 2017.
However, this story has a happy ending.
“My husband found the ring right before our trip and found a jewelry store who graciously scrambled to find a diamond ring to put in my custom-made ring,” she said. “He presented it to me on the courts in Key West on our anniversary.”
Jen Mulson is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
