“It absolutely verifies it was the right vision and what we all thought it would be once the PicklePlex people began to articulate it to the community,” said Nancy Prafke, a member of the Punta Gorda City Council and an early supporter of the 16-court complex.
“We got calls for people wanting to schedule tournaments even before we broke ground,” Prafke said. “We’ve known for a long time there was a demand. It’s been a challenge to get others to see the same thing. But (the world championships) were proof of what we have been saying all along.”
Venues like this are popping up across the United States. I’ve never heard anyone say that their pickleball courts are always empty. Which is the opposite of what you hear about so many of the baseball fields and tennis courts out there. But maybe I’m just hanging out with a different crowd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I see so many people on FB forums that say they are addicted and have only been playing for a week. It seems like it is an addictive drug that once you try it, you can’t stop. I know for myself that when I can’t play for a few days, I start to get withdrawals. Pickleball is my drug.
My daughter plays on and off when she finds the time to play with me. She played in her first 2.5 tournament a few weeks ago and loved it. Her competitive spirit makes her want to play more and more.
Couldn’t agree with you more @jordan Pickleball in Southern California has been exploding for the last 5 years and I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon!
I feel like it’s our job, where pickleball is growing and thriving, to help other communities around the nation, and world, to know how to replicate the growth that’s taking place in pockets like SoCal and here, in Utah
In Northern Cali we have 8 courts after the city agreed to use 2 tennis courts for us…that was 2 years ago and we are bursting at the seams with people getting paddles for Christmas and now whole family’s are showing up. We could easily use 8 more courts
Hey Ted! Are there a lot of cities in northern California where pickleball seems to be picking up?
When I hear about something happening like your city agreed to allow you to use two tennis courts to make 8 pickleball courts, I wonder who is talking behind the scenes and what are they saying, to get the city councils, etc. to agree to it? Clearly they’re saying the right things!
I hope eventually we can use these forums as a means to surface and organize this type of information, so that we can help out the pickleball evangelists in the communities that are having a harder time convincing local leaders that they should build (more) pickleball courts.
We were lucky to have a player that had a wife in the recreation board and that got us our 1st court conversion. 2 years later we begged for another and got it but they said then that was it. We have doubled in the amount of players and need to double courts but not to positive we will get them. Redding an 1 1/2 hours North has been raising funds that the city will match for 6 new courts for over a year now and they are super close to having the funds about 150k. An hour to the south YUBA City just completed converting several tennis courts into 6 pball courts.
