Bruce Edwards wants to promote new exercise and recreation opportunities for Albany. Bob VanderLinden is an ambassador for the USA Pickleball Association.

Together, the men are putting together Albany’s first pickleball clinic, to be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. this Sunday at the Boys & Girls Club of Albany.

“It’s a very, very fun sport, very easy on the body,” said Edwards, recreation and sports coordinator for Albany Parks and Recreation. “It’s a game that really lends itself to all age brackets, genders and ability levels.”

The clinic is free. The city also has pickleball equipment available for people to check out. Currently, the only available courts are outdoors — at Burkhart Park on Burkhart Street at Sixth Avenue, and at North Albany Middle School — but if demand is there, Edwards said the city hopes to pursue creating a court indoors.

Pickleball is a sort of life-sized ping-pong game, played with oversized paddles and a plastic ball on a badminton-sized court with a tennis-height net. Up to four people can play at once.

Like tennis, it’s a game of angles and strategies, of position and speed. But the light equipment, smaller court and mere handful of rules make it easy to learn and to play.

Named after a cocker spaniel who liked to steal the whiffleballs, pickleball dates back to a summer on Bainbridge Island in 1965. Joel Pritchard, then a U.S. congressman, and several other friends invented the game for their families (and the dog, Pickles) to play.

VanderLinden discovered pickleball last winter in a recreational vehicle park in Arizona. He enjoyed it so much, he and friends asked to create a court this past May at North Albany Middle School.

VanderLinden listed the court on the national association’s website and received a message from the organization: Would he be interested in being an ambassador, helping to promote the sport in the mid-valley?

VanderLinden said he would, and contacted the city of Albany, which forwarded the message to Edwards. The city added bright yellow stripes on the Burkhart tennis court in September and the two met for Edwards’ first pickleball game about two weeks ago.

“It’s contagious. I did not want to stop,” Edwards said. “I could have hit there all day.That’s what’s so inviting — you don’t have to have a lot of experience to play. You can start having fun from the first time you hit the ball.”

Tennis it isn’t, VanderLinden said. It’s much less formal — and louder, too.

“We’re yelling and screaming,” he said.