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.”