Dinks & Drinks 11/18
Pickleball, paddles, and conversation only found on the court.
Dinks & Drinks
Pickleball, paddles, and the kind of conversation you can’t schedule.
Wednesday, November 18 · 6:00–8:00 PM
The Wicked Pickle · 2401 W Broadway, South Portland, ME
Paddles and balls included. Food and drinks on site afterward, discounted for our group.
Everyone says the best business happens on the golf course.
At The Atrium, we’d argue it happens over a dink.
A dink is the soft, slow shot played low and close to the net. You can’t win a point with it. You play it to keep the rally alive until the real opening shows up.
Which is more or less exactly how the best business relationships work.
So: two hours of pickleball, two courts, and a group of like-minded professionals. Then drinks.
How the night runs
6:00 — Paddles up.
Everyone on court. Clinic starts on one court, open play on the other.
6:00–7:00 — Split hour.
Clinic tickets spend the hour with a certified instructor: serve, dink, scoring, strategy, the two rules everybody gets wrong. Open play tickets are already rallying next door.
7:00–8:00 — Everybody plays.
Both courts, rotating games. You play with the whole room instead of the same three people all night.
8:00 — Paddles down, drinks up.
Court time ends and we head straight to the bar — no relocating, no losing half the group in the parking lot. The Wicked Pickle makes their food in-house and has a genuinely good drink list, and our group gets a discount on both. This is the part where people trade numbers and social media info.
What’s included
- Two hours of reserved court time on two courts
- Paddles and balls — bring nothing but sneakers
- A full hour with a certified instructor, if you want it
- Rotating play, so you meet the whole room and not just your side of the net
- Discounted food and drinks after play
“I’ve never played pickleball.”
Beginners are encouraged! That’s why we hired an instructor.
Pickleball is genuinely the easiest racquet sport to pick up — most people are rallying inside of ten minutes. And if you’d rather learn it properly than get thrown in, take the clinic. That’s precisely what it’s there for, and you still get a full hour of open play after.
Nothing builds a relationship faster than being a beginner next to another beginner. The learning curve is the icebreaker.
Pick your ticket
Clinic + Open Play — one hour of instruction, then one hour of open play. Best pick if you’re new, rusty, or want to stop guessing at the scoring.
Open Play — two full hours on court. Best pick if you already know your way around a paddle.
With the Atrium Experience Pass, it’s $15 a night instead of $40.
(The Pass also gets you member pricing at every in-person event we host, plus full access to The Atrium Ecosystem.)