For those that live under a rock, I got into a twitter … altercation? Argument? Beef? With the Kitchen last Sunday on twitter after a tweet that, (in my view) was inappropriate regarding Kate Fahey’s on court behavior. Here’s that tweet and my response.
This is embarrassing. If you wanna post shit like this post it from a personal acc. You don’t have to understand shit. We are screaming to the 1 seed
— #Anna Bright (#@annabright108)
1:12 AM • Jul 28, 2025
This resulted in an absolute flurry of twitter activity, with pros, pro pickleball twitter nerds, and fans chiming in. Honestly it felt like everyone and their mom was involved. Highly entertaining stuff if you haven’t already seen it, would strongly recommend checking it out.
I don’t feel the need to comment too much further on my interaction with the Kitchen. Obviously, I was mad and reacted impulsively, but I’d do it again. I have no problem with people having an opinion on my or others’ behavior. However, the tone and use of the platform account with “I” statements and highly inflammatory language I found very inappropriate. It was posed in a way that encouraged people to hate on Kate, whether intentionally or not. Considering the Kitchen’s platform, I found their language, tone, and usage of that account wrong and, honestly, as I said in my tweet… embarrassing. That’s my OPINION. You can disagree.
One stance though I will clarify that I find particularly dumb in this whole screaming discourse is that it is wrong to be getting fired up when you’re losing. The beauty, the blessing, and sometimes the curse of racket sports is that there is no clock. Winning is always possible. If you give up when you’re down and stop doing what gives you the best chance to win, I think that says more about you and that you have some self-reflecting to do. I would rather embarrass myself and have a shot at winning than keel over and die, personally.
So, in summary, I don’t have a problem with their opinion on the screaming. That’s their prerogative. But, in case you were interested… here’s mine!
NOTE: I also went on Matty Pickle’s YouTube channel and discussed this and other relevant pickleball topics of the day. It was really fun, give it a listen here.
My Take
As a self-declared screamer (wink), I’m obviously okay with it. In my view, I’m a professional and it is my responsibility, especially in a team environment where you are only playing one game to 11, to get myself into whatever headspace I need to be in to give myself and my team the best possible chance to win. For me, that means I need to be mad. Especially in women’s doubles. In mixed, it’s a bit different, perhaps I’ll write on that sometime.
Being mad means:
Not caring if I hurt my opponents’ feelings
Not caring if I behave in a way deemed “not classy” by someone on Facebook
Not caring if I look like an idiot
It does NOT mean:
I will ever go personal or say anything personal to an opponent
I will cheat
I will shriek at someone if I hit them HARD (this to me is different and I would only do this if I either felt I’d been cheated or REALLY disliked an opponent and was generally seeing red)
So this is how I view things. I don’t get offended if other people are loud, scream while looking into my soul, or pretty much do anything so long as they don’t cheat or say something personal.
In high-level competition, people are different on court vs off court. I think a lot of people conflate on-court behavior to off-court, and to me, as long as you don’t cross the line of cheating/going personal, I don’t see any on-court behavior as an inherent character flaw.
This is my opinion, you can disagree! Thanks for reading (: