City moving forward with pickleball courts

It’s one of the fastest growing sports in the country with the funny name.

Pickleball, a somewhat slower-paced version of tennis, has become more and more popular in recent years and now, players will soon have their own courts to play on in Boulder City. Until now, they have been sharing them with tennis players.

Last week, city engineer Jim Keane said, “Staff is working on processing the contracts and scheduling the pre-construction conference. We anticipate construction will begin in late January 2025.”

A feature on the sport’s popularity in Boulder City will appear in a future edition of the Review.

On Dec. 10, the Boulder City Council approved a resolution on a bid by Las Vegas Paving Corporation in the amount not to exceed $544,085 for courts at Veterans Memorial Park. Along with surveying, design and advertising for bids, the project will carry a total price tag of $611,520.

A city report states, “As part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), funding was allocated for park improvements. During the Dec. 12, 2023 meeting, city council approved Resolution No. 7739 to reallocate additional ARPA funding to the planned pickleball courts project to be located at Veterans Memorial Park. This project will consist of grading, post-tensioned concrete slab, concrete sidewalk, slab surfacing and striping, fencing, and pickleball court amenities.”

Four courts will be built adjacent to the existing basketball courts at the park.

According to usapickleball.org, while the sport is seeing quite a bit of popularity, it celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

“After playing golf one Saturday during the summer, Joel Pritchard, congressman from Washington State and Bill Bell, successful businessman, returned to Pritchard’s home on Bainbridge Island, Wash. (near Seattle) to find their families sitting around with nothing to do,” it states. “The property had an old badminton court so Pritchard and Bell looked for some badminton equipment and could not find a full set of rackets.

“They improvised and started playing with ping-pong paddles and a perforated plastic ball. At first, they placed the net at badminton height of 60 inches and volleyed the ball over the net. As the weekend progressed, the players found that the ball bounced well on the asphalt surface and soon the net was lowered to 36 inches. The following weekend, Barney McCallum was introduced to the game at Pritchard’s home. Soon, the three men created rules, relying heavily on badminton. They kept in mind the original purpose, which was to provide a game that the whole family could play together.”

As of 2023, there were more than 70,000 members of USA Pickleball, which included 11,000 locations on the USA Pickleball’s Places2Play map. This does not include the tens of thousands of casual players who are not part of USA Pickleball.

As for the unusual name, the website states that it’s, “A reference to the thrown-together leftover non-starters in the pickle boat of crew races. Many years later, as the sport grew, a controversy ensued when a few neighbors said they were there when Joan Pritchard named the game after the family dog, Pickles. Joan and the Pritchard family have held fast for decades that the dog came along a few years later and was named after the game.”