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Meet a cancer survivor turned pickleball star, Chicken ‘n Pickle, and more!

Chicken N Pickle: The Pickleball Restaurant Taking the US by Storm

If you haven’t come across a Chicken N Pickle yet, chances are you soon will. The Kansas City, MO-based company has been rapidly opening its entertainment complexes across the US, bringing its unique and family-friendly blend of pickleball, dining, and recreation to more and more markets.

Chicken N Pickle currently has complexes in Grapevine and San Antonio, TX; Wichita and Overland Park, KS; Kansas City, MO; Oklahoma City, OK; and Grand Prairie, TX. Plans are to keep expanding with future sites opening in Glendale, AZ; Allen and Webster, TX; Thornton and Parker, CO; Fishers, IN; Henderson, NV; and St. Charles, MO.

Chicken N Pickle is not your typical recreation/restaurant combo. The company seeks to source all food from area family farmers in each market, and its Our Hearts Are Local program holds dozens of charitable events annually that give back to the communities it serves.

We loved what we heard about these pickleball-centered event destinations, so we headed to Texas to check out the location at Grapevine, where we had the good fortune of chatting with the complex’s Director of Pickleball, Laura Kemp, a member of the Professional Pickleball Registry and Level 2 IPTPA certified instructor.

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How Pickleball Saved a Life

By Elizabeth Hagy

IN THE SUMMER OF 2017, THE FIRST SIGN OF WHAT WOULD CHANGE JAMIE ELLIOT’S LIFE FOREVER EMERGED.

A lifelong athlete who had made the Junior Olympics in track and field as well as swimming, Jamie was playing a lot of golf and pickleball at the time and thought the ache in her back was simply a byproduct of her active lifestyle. Still, she went for an x-ray. “They found something on a rib,” she recalled. She then had a CT scan, which provides detailed internal images of the body.

“They found a mass,” she said. “I sat in my room, in my pajamas, sobbing, never imagining that I’d have cancer.”

 Jamie was diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a rare type of cancer that often initially manifests in the bones. Chemo and radiation is not effective against it; treatment usually involves surgery.  In March 2018, surgeons removed four of Jamie’s ribs and shaved part of her vertebrae.  Remarkably, four months later, she was competing in the Senior Olympics in pickleball – not just competing, but excelling, as she and her partner took home the silver medal.

 “I felt fine,” she said. But as part of her regimen to detect any return of chondrosarcoma, she had a CT scan in March 2019.  It revealed a tumor on her spine.  The plan was to surgically remove it. “But they couldn’t get it off,” she said. “I was left with movement in my upper body but nothing in the lower body. That was the start of my journey.”

 Pickle Madness spoke with Chicken N Pickle and Paddletek sponsored athlete Jamie Elliott recently about this journey, an uplifting story of faith, determination, and inspiration.

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