Jeff Christman—A Glue Guy Keeping People Together Even After He’s Gone.
I used to live next to tennis courts.
Until that is, by all accounts, those tennis courts became pickleball courts.
I know the exact moment things changed because of the sound. That truly unique, pickleball pop. I heard it all day and all night.
You likely know the sound too, because that pickleball pop is omnipresent as pickleball has become the fastest growing sport on the planet.
Maybe you hate the sound, like when your wife refuses to turn the sound off on her phone and a drop of blood trickles down from your ear each time she gets a new email. Maybe you love the sound because you just got some new Franklin pickleball racquets and have plans to dust off your 1991 All Conference Honorable Mention athletic credentials and become king of the court in your neighborhood.
Well, regardless of how you feel about pickleball, one thing is for certain, you’re going to love Jeff Christman.
Pulltab Sports first got to know the name Jeff Christman when a loyal podcast listener reached out to us about supporting their annual Pickleball Vs. Cancer charity event last month in Saint Louis Park. The event was created to honor a legend, Jeff Christman, a former hockey player from Washburn who passed away from cancer in 2019.
Working with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, Pickleball Vs. Cancer has raised over $40K to help fight the disease that killed Jeff.
As hockey people would say, Jeff Christman was a legendary “glue-guy.” You know when you bump into someone and he gives you the double guns and says you should have dinner sometime soon and you never do. Well, Jeff was the opposite of that guy.
Jeff Christman was the kind of person that kept tabs and kept in touch with everyone. If his friends were flowers, Jeff Christman watered the garden every damn day. A true connector, Jeff brought people together faster than an 11pm pizza delivery.
Jeff Christman was the sort of character that if his life story was ever written, Matthew McConaughey would option the script. True story: Jeff met his wife in a car crash. He was leaving Baskin Robbins, listening to Bob Seger, and driving a Buick. Even the alliteration is epic.
Jeff Christman was an inventor. Jeff is one of the pioneers of a sport called Skippyball. What is Skippyball you ask? It’s a hockey game played in shinny gear on a studio sized rink, with a smaller net using a ball. Once a week Jeff’s crew would get together on the studio rink at Parade and play Skippyball. I’ve long wanted to have a standing tee time with good friends, Jeff was the sort of larger than life personality that had a standing tee time to play a sport he helped invent with his buddies. The guys still play Skippyball today every Saturday morning at 7:30am at Parade with no exceptions, except the annual Pickleball tournament.
Jeff Christman was a roll up your sleeves do-it-yourselfer. The sort of guy when someone decided Skippyball would be better if it was played with smaller sized nets went home and built those nets, from scratch. He probably didn’t even ask the guy at Home Depot where to go. He already knew.
Jeff Christman had a lot of friends, as evidence by the 300 doubles teams that took part in this year’s tournament. Jeff was the sort of guy that when they pass away make funeral home operators wonder if they should add stadium seating.
Jeff Christman was always-on. He was known to regularly shout “LET’S GO!” long before it became in vogue with every athlete on the planet. In fact, Jeff was known to pick up his buddies in his 1970 Buick Electra 225 and no matter the hour, the first thing you’d hear was a full throated “LET’S GO!” as you headed to your destination, wherever that may be.
Jeff Christman was also a thinker. The sort of person who’d liked to debate what was in fact a sport and what wasn’t over a couple beers. With apologies to the Women’s World Cup, Jeff famously declared soccer an “activity” not a sport because it didn’t require hand eye coordination.
As Jeff’s health took a turn for the worse battling cancer, pickleball became one of the few sports he could still play, so he embraced it. It was another way for the glue guy to stick in his new reality.
Jeff Christman was an act-like-you’ve-been-there-before guy who didn’t like the attention. The sort of “We” not “Me” breed that hockey helps create because an assist is worth just as many points as a goal. A Walter Payton type who’d prefer to hand the ball to the ref after a touchdown or one of his linemen rather than hide a Sharpie in the field goal pole for a celebration all on his own.
And while no one knows for sure what Jeff would think of the Pickleball vs. Cancer tournament today, odds are he’d love the pageantry including a few wrestling style robes worn this year. If he were there himself, Jeff would have been one of the first to arrive and last to leave. His mountains would have been blue, and he wouldn’t have cared whether he won or lost, just that everyone was exactly where they should be—together.
That’s Jeff Christman. Glue Guy. Connector. Friend. And that’s the picture I want in all of your heads.
From now on whenever you hear that familiar pickleball pop I want you to think of Jeff Christman. I know I will.
We miss ya, Jeff. But we know the nets will be ready when we get there.
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