Pickleball Behind Steel Doors

The Pickleball Courts Inside MSP

Prisons are built to intimidate. That's the point.

Most of us think of security as something that keeps bad things out. Locked doors. Alarm systems. Cameras. Maine State Prison flips that around. Every door locks behind you. Every hallway reminds you exactly where you are.

On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, I walked through those doors as a guest.

Steel gates. Automatic locks. Thick glass. One checkpoint after another. Each door closing behind us with the kind of sound Hollywood loves because it works.

And then, through the last door, we heard it.

Laughter.

Actual, genuine laughter. The sound of people having fun, and being competitive on the court. We walked into the gym and found residents and corrections officers playing together. Nobody seemed interested in labels. The only thing anyone cared about was whether you could return the ball.

Five minutes in, it felt like any open play session anywhere else. Was there trash-talking? Obviously. Its pickleball. But everyone was there to compete, improve(hopefully), and burn off some steam.

Five guys from the outside. A gym full of residents and guards. Nobody asking where you've been - just whether you want to play.

The Game

If you've ever played pickup at an open court, you know the feeling. You show up, you don't know anyone, you grab a paddle, and within five minutes you're laughing at a bad dink with people you just met.

That's exactly what was happening inside Maine's maximum-security prison.

Every resident we met was kind and respectful, without exception. Members of our group kept commenting that if we'd met any of these guys at a random open play session, nobody would ever guess they were incarcerated. In fact, I've been to plenty of open plays with shady folks trying to cheat on line-calls & kitchen infractions (I'm talking to you, Betsy). This was NOT that. These guys were honest, and just happy to be on the court. A few of the residents that I found especially easy to talk to were actually serving extended sentences - 15yrs, 20yrs, even life sentences. That hit me hard.

In a place defined by separation and control, pickleball created a space where everyone was equal. On the court, you're not labeled inmate, CO, or volunteer. You're just the person on the other side of the net.

"Pickleball, especially in a prison setting, is tremendously fun. It takes all the armor off and all the stigmas of who's who. Everybody comes out here on that little tiny court, they break bread, have fun whacking a ball, and play pickleball. It's a great sport to have in prisons because it actually drops the stigmas of us not liking each other." — Brad Chesnel, pickleball player

How This Started

Two years ago, Forrest Burns, the recreation supervisor at Maine State Prison, sent an email to a pickleball club on the midcoast. He was hoping some members might be willing to come play with and against the men inside.

John Coray, president of Midcoast Maine Pickleball, got that email. He didn't know what to expect. He showed up alone for a two-hour lesson on his first visit, thinking he'd assess the players and get a feel for the place.

"This is a maximum-security prison," he told a News Center Maine reporter later. "This is Maine's big house. And I'm thinking, I don't know what to expect here."

What he found was a group of men who were eager to learn, eager to compete, and eager to connect with people from the outside.

The program caught on fast. For the past two years, volunteers from the Brunswick area have been driving to Warren about every six weeks to play. Far more civilians volunteer than can be accommodated. The waiting list tells you everything you need to know about what this program means to the people who show up for it.

You might already know John Coray from his work building up the sport in the Brunswick area (View from the Court: Pickleball in Midcoast Maine post). He's the kind of guy who shows up, does the work, and doesn't need credit for it. The fact that he walked into a maximum-security prison alone on his first visit says everything about the man.

The Bigger Picture

This program didn't happen in a vacuum. It's part of a broader shift in how Maine approaches corrections, one that started under Randy Liberty, the state's Commissioner of Corrections.

Liberty's story is remarkable on its own. As a young boy, he visited his incarcerated father at the Maine State Prison. Four decades later, he returned as its warden. He now serves as Commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections, and he recently published a memoir called Liberty's Prison: The Inmate's Son Who Radically Reformed an American Prison about his journey from the visiting room to the top of the state's corrections system. You can pick it up at Longfellow Books in Portland.

Under his leadership, Maine has implemented what they call the Maine Model of Corrections, a philosophy built on rehabilitation, dignity, and the belief that people who are incarcerated will eventually return to society, and we have a choice about what kind of people they'll be when they do.

The results back it up. Maine's recidivism rate sits at 21%, well below the national average of 65%. Assaults on staff at the Maine State Prison have dropped by more than 90% over the last eight years.

Don't get it twisted. Programs like the pickleball visits aren't coddling. Participation in the pickleball group is one of the most difficult privileges to obtain. It's a reward for good conduct that's very hard to earn, and incredibly easy to lose. Corrections officer Denis Duperre, who's worked at the prison for 24 years, put it plainly to News Center Maine:

"Look at what they're doing. They're playing a sport. They're not trying to figure out how to hustle, how to hurt somebody. It's about as pro-social as it gets."

The program has even attracted outside attention. In March 2025, the Peaceful Prisons Project, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit, brought Olympic-drafted player Gina Cilento to the prison for a clinic and "Peaceful Playoffs." She heard about the program, reached out, and showed up because she believed in what was happening there.

The Paddles

I bring a bag full of paddles everywhere I play. Partly because people like trying different gear. Partly because I apparently enjoy carrying unnecessary weight around parking lots.

Because of security restrictions and the fact that it was my first visit, I could only bring two paddles inside. Both were our new C-605 Ctrl.

Two paddles wasn't enough. I spent most of the session playing with other people's paddles because the residents kept asking to try the SALT ones. But what surprised me wasn't just the interest in the equipment. It was the interest in the company too. Why SALT. Why Maine. Why pickleball. Why start the company in the first place.

I didn't get into my whole history. I didn't really need to.

There was a level of mutual understanding in a lot of those conversations that didn't require much explaining.

The guys inside were genuinely kind to us. Thoughtful. Curious. Funny. I've thought about that visit a lot since leaving. Certain conversations keep replaying in my head.

I've already started bugging Coray about bringing me back for another session. I also want to figure out how SALT can support the program in a more meaningful way going forward. I'm truly excited for what comes next with this.

Why This Matters to SALT

SALT Pickleball was born out of the belief that pickleball is for everyone. Not as a marketing line. As a genuinely held conviction.

I've always thought that I started making pickleball paddles because I was stubborn.

Perhaps I started making paddles because, subconsciously, I sensed that pickleball gave me back something that I thought was lost forever. After an injury ended my athletic career, after a period of active addiction and chronic poor choices; pickleball was the thing that brought me back to myself. It gave me competition, movement, focus, and a community that didn't care about my past. It just asked if I wanted to play.

I left MSP thinking about how fast we reduce people to the worst thing they've ever done.

Then, I watched a gym full of people forget about all of that for a couple hours over pickleball.

That felt important.

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