Swing Set

Jacob Triche, Owner/Designer, GRIT. Instagram: @grit_pickleball

A short stroll from the oak- and magnolia-studded canopy of Baton Rouge’s Highland Road Park curves a quiet street with a curious structure standing out both literally and figuratively. It’s the black tower of a barndominium, and it looks airlifted directly from Stockholm. Below modern loft-like kitchen and living spaces spreads an expansive workshop, and the noise echoing from behind its two rolling garage doors is not the agitated buzz off the table saw, the falsetto whine from the belly of the CNC machine or the low hum of the 3D printer, but a percussive thwack and thump that grows increasingly competitive.

This is the Swiss-cheesed polyethylene orb of a neon pickleball slapping the black wood wall above a leather couch before ricocheting to meet the blunt force face of the paddle once again. And again.

A veteran woodworker and industrial design grad from ULL, Jacob Triche is obsessed with detail and process. Growing up, his sketches in school books were angular schematics, not doodles. He can spend a few hours a day swinging away like this, not so much practicing his mechanics next to a massive white board covered in notes and statistics, but instead hitting the ball and listening keenly to the depth of sound it makes flying off the paddle like a master violinist might chart the tone of his vibrato as the bow’s horsehair slides over the strings.

Triche isn’t trying to be a prize-winning pickleball player — at least, not yet — but he wants others to get that chance using the paddles he has designed and tested himself through his new athletic brand called Grit.

In fact, one amateur player already has.

Using one of Triche’s early paddle designs, Maddie Nguyen recently won the 3.5 Moneyball Tournament at Stacks Pickleball in Baton Rouge.

“I like the Grit. paddle for its lightness and the texture to grab onto the ball for more top-spin on my shots,” Nguyen says. “The light weight helps me to get back to my ready position for the next ball or for fast hand battles where I can struggle to be faster at the kitchen [the area close to the net].”

Triche has multiple paddles of various shapes and weights as well as performance clothing rolling out this year.

“All these brands talk about paddles as if it is so advanced and techy, and to me it’s very basic, and they could be so much better than they are, so I’ve tested so many and hopefully designed something that’s better than anything out there,” says the Baton Rouge native whose custom furniture business Revival Supply Co. took him to Dallas, Denver and finally Redding, California, where he sold his company to an investor and first encountered pickleball culture in 2019. “I thought people were joking with me, just because they were playing a game I’d never seen on these backwoods courts, and they were all so into it.”

Since then pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in America, and research from the Association of Pickleball Professionals reveals nearly 50 million adults played the sport in the past year alone. That’s almost one out of every five adults in the U.S., and Triche caught the bug, too.

“This is fun, it involves athleticism and competitiveness, design and functionality, all in a small package, so I love it,” he says, picking up a black device that looks like flexible baseball tee. “This is how it all started, I made these.”

Built from the legs of a concert mic stand, and various tubes, springs and custom 3D-printed fittings, the apparatus lets pickleball players swing over and over to a returning, connected ball. It disassembles like a sniper rifle and fits in a small duffle bag.

Whether it’s a handcrafted countertop, a paddle, a practice tee or tech tees and hoodies, Triche’s aesthetics remain minimalist. Steinbeck adventure novels and Scandinavian architecture are the only combatants wrestling for overt influence in equal measure.

His color palettes are focused and muted blacks and neutrals, leaving the textures — of hand-carved cypress or bolt-marked boxcar wood or the feel of the carbon fiber on a paddle — in the spotlight.

“In design, clothing, everything, I like things that are in their most natural state, without any hindrance — that’s going to be as beautiful as it gets. Things don’t get more beautiful by adding complexity. Simplicity is best.”

Besides a large model number and “Designed in Louisiana” the only other markings on the paddles are the bold sans-serif logo and a phrase that has become Triche’s daily meditation: “Made for more.” He’s a working craftsman but with an inventor’s heart, and he hopes Grit. can take him and those inspired by his products to bold new places.

“You have to have grit playing a sport, but you have to have courage to not back down in life, to keep going through adversity, too,” Triche says. “I believe we are ‘made for more,’ like the paddles say, and that’s what Grit. is really about — finding real reward when you beat that fear of failure, and you make or do something you’re proud of and that people respond to. I hope I can work at that every day.”

Q&A

What’s a piece of advice you’ve gotten that has informed your career? The best advice and guidance has usually been given to me by example. To see people work hard at their dreams, day in and day out, has been the most inspiring to me.

You’ve lived in very different parts of the country, but returned to Louisiana. What is it about home that inspires you to keep inventing and pushing boundaries? I’d say it’s the challenge of coming from a place where ambition isn’t as strong as in other parts of the world. It is tough to keep going sometimes. But pushing boundaries comes natural to me. I enjoy doing what most won’t. In Louisiana, my friends and family are a wonderful support for me.

If you could play pickleball with anyone, who would you choose and why?  Definitely [top-ranked pickleball player] Ben Johns. I like his demeanor on and off the court. He’s a solid guy who treats people well. And his skills are pretty decent, I guess!

What do you like to do around Baton Rouge for fun? Lots of pickleball at the new spot, Court to Table, and Stacks. I like rebuilding cars and developing new ideas with my friends. I like a dinner out at The Colonel’s Club or at Superior Grill on Highland Road, but I’m always down to try new restaurants. Also, working out at Geaux CrossFit, and taking the boat out on weekends.