A Torn Achilles From Pickleball Put Me in the Club I Never Wanted to Join

I heard the pop first. It sounded like a pickleball thwacking off a paddle, precisely what I was intending to do when I exploded from the set position and backpedaled to return our opponent’s smash.

The pain came next. Like I’d been shot in the lower part of my right calf. As I crumpled to the court, the arch of my foot throbbing in pain, I yelled to my doubles partner, “Shooter?!”

He ran over, his face ashen.

“There’s no shooter, dude,” he said calmly, but with concern. “I’m pretty sure that sound came from inside your leg.”

I had torn my Achilles tendon

At that moment, there on the cold concrete behind our local high school, I knew deep down that a lifelong fear of mine had just become reality: I had torn my Achilles tendon. Subsequent visits to sports medicine and podiatry experts confirmed my sinking suspicion. I had surgery to repair the injury 11 days later.

This makes me the newest member of an elite association that also includes hoopsters like Klay Thompson and Jayson Tatum, former vice president Al Gore, and actor Brad Pitt. I like to call our gang the Achilles Repair Club.

Affiliation with this supergroup is no joke. Every comrade must grapple with a six to nine-month recovery. Physical therapy is a must. In my case, I can’t drive until Thanksgiving.

To put it mildly, the Achilles gang is a fellowship I never expected to join.

It’s been humbling

This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in this situation. Over the past five years, I’ve unexpectedly added several other groups to the resume: The Divorce Club, the Single Dad Club, and the Pre-diabetes Club, to name a few.

The experiences have been a mashup of surreal, frustrating, humbling, and empowering. Every time, I’ve found comfort in seeking out knowledge, sympathy, and kinship.

Take the Divorce Club, for example. Like hundreds of thousands of other Americans, I became a card-carrying member of this one during the pandemic. I thought I’d grow old with my wife; the reality of ending a 17-year marriage left me flummoxed and feeling totally adrift.

Thankfully, a psychologist friend was running a weekly online support group for people like me, and connecting with this ragtag raft of recent divorcees provided the perspective and to get me through.

I joined the Single Dad Club during the same stretch as a solo father to three girls. At first the transition was totally overwhelming; every night I’d ask myself, “How the hell am I going to do this?” A mix of library books and bar nights with buddies in the same boat helped me recognize I wasn’t alone — and that I was far more capable than I ever understood.

Years later, after a blood test revealed that my A1C levels were escalating, I found myself a rookie in the Pre-diabetes Club, with the welcome gift of a drug named Metformin. This one was a little tougher for me to wrap my head around; no matter how many Google searches I did, no matter how many academic articles I could read, inching closer to diabetes as I hurtled toward 50 felt scary and inexorably tied to my own mortality.

I DMed an actor for advice

Fast-forward to my induction into the Achilles Repair Club. The night before my surgery, I lay awake in bed, scrolling the AchillesRupture subreddit and not-so-quietly freaking out about the procedure and what would be my first encounter with general anesthesia.

I remembered how much personal connections had helped me manage unexpected challenges in the past, and remembered reading about how Sterling K. Brown showed up at this year’s Emmy Awards on a knee-scooter after an Achilles injury of his own. So I slid into the actor’s DMs and sent him solidarity and best wishes for the months ahead.

Two days later, while I groggily recuperated on the couch, I received a response.

“Sending them right back to you, Matt,” wrote the star of “Paradise, Washington Black,” and “This Is Us.” “The journey is not easy…but it ain’t forever either! Ask for the help that you need (as I tell myself the same thing)!”

Today a printout of this note hangs on the corkboard in my bedroom, a constant inspiration for the months ahead.

Sometimes it seems bizarre to become a card-carrying member of a club you never expected to join. And sometimes, even when you least expect it, feeling like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself is exactly what you need to overcome adversity and slay the day.