local-government

Pickleball’s popularity — and demand for courts to play on — has convinced Lincoln Parks and Recreation Department officials to create a master plan to determine how many tennis courts and pickleball courts the city needs and where it needs them.

“Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in America,” said Joel Houston, a board member of Pickleball Lincoln, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to the game. “Our club is very vibrant for the size of our city.”

The club began six years ago and the three founders worked with the city to convert two tennis courts in Peterson Park near South 27th Street and Nebraska 2 into six pickleball courts, Houston said.

The club began small, as the popularity of the game began to make its way from the coasts to the Midwest, but its membership has exploded, growing by 50% in each of the past few years. At last look, Houston said, Pickleball Lincoln had 818 members.

Lincoln is not unique. Since it was invented in 1965 — a combination of badminton, pingpong and tennis played with a wiffle ball — the game has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing sports. More than 4 million people play, and what started as a game played by older Americans has piqued the interest of the younger set.

Today, more than 35% of the players in the country are under 30, Houston said, and there are two professional pickleball circuits.

All of that convinced Parks and Rec Director Lynn Johnson that the city needs to take a broad view of the existing tennis and pickleball courts, find out how much people are actually playing and come up with a plan to meet that demand.

“In communities where there is dual use of courts for tennis and pickleball, the amount of pickleball has increased and caused challenges in making sure there is adequate space for both,” Johnson said. “Last year, we started to hear from tennis players struggling to find tennis courts they could play on.”

Houston said the growth of pickleball was happening when the pandemic hit. Then tennis was deemed safe to play and interest in it spiked, creating more competition for courts.

The city now has 10 dedicated pickleball courts in Peterson Park. After the city converted the two tennis courts into six pickleball courts, Pickleball Lincoln paid to build four more.

Of Lincoln’s 41 tennis courts in 17 of its neighborhood and community parks, 28 courts in eight of those parks are dual-striped for tennis or pickleball, in addition to the 10 dedicated courts in Peterson Park, said Sara Hartzell, park planning assistant with Parks and Rec.

Houston said Pickleball Lincoln has offered to pay for more dedicated courts, but so far, the city hasn’t approved them.

Johnson said it’s interested in working with Pickleball Lincoln but because of the expense — it cost about $200,000 to build the dedicated courts in Peterson Park — the city decided it should go through a more thorough planning process first.

The city went through a similar process with Wilderness Park and inclusive playgrounds, coming up with master plans for both.

“We go through the master planning process to do a better job of trying to make sure we distribute all these opportunities throughout the community rather than accidentally getting more in one part of the city,” he said.

Among the issues Johnson said officials want to look at: the condition of the existing courts, where they are and how many courts per 10,000 people is the right amount to meet demand.

This week, the city hopes to release a community survey to find out, among other things, how often and where residents play, what time of day, and whether they’d play more if more courts were available.

Pickleball Lincoln has an agreement with Parks and Rec to use courts at five parks for pickleball four days a week, said Houston, a pickleball teaching pro at Genesis Health, a USA Pickleball ambassador and a sponsored player for Engage Pickleball.

And those courts are well-used.

“The appeal of pickleball is it’s fun to play at any age and every skill level,” he said. “We’re always looking for more courts.”