Port Townsend Pickleball Players play on four ourside basketball courts and inside on two badminton courts. The Port Townsend High School has four lined courts on the single outdoor tennis court. There is also one blue lined court on the outdoor Court House tennis court.
What: International Indoor Pickleball Championships 2016
When: Wednesday May 11 thru Sunday May 15 Where: Northwest Sports Hub, Centralia, WA
Who: 3.0-5.0 Players
How Much:
$50 Registration Fee if paid before end of March and $70 to May 2nd
$10 event fee for each Age Group and Skill level event (3.0 to 4.5) and $25 for each Open event
The easiest way to modify a tennis court is to adjust the existing net and add one set of pickleball lines. On a standard tennis court, the net is 36 inches high at the center strap and 42 inches high at the either side post. The first step to conversion would be to lower the net down to 34 inches at the center. (A pickleball court is half the width, so the net height at the side lines is 36 inches.)
Once the net is the right height, pickleball lines can be added with chalk or paint, while still keeping the tennis court lines intact.
Turning one tennis court into one pickleball court is the easiest conversion, but it will leave a lot of unused space. A standard tennis court is 60 feet by 120 feet, and the minimum size of a pickleball court is 30 feet by 60 feet. Because of this size difference, one tennis court can be turned into two, or even four pickleball courts.
Find Out What Happens When Tennis and Pickleball Mix The California desert is redefining the relationship between pickleball and tennis! Watch this exciting episode of I ♥ Pickleball and hear how ambassador Chris Thomas worked with the City and local tennis clubs and resorts to grow pickleball in the greater Palm Springs area...and pickleball is exploding!
Hear directly from the pros who run the tennis and pickleball programs at three major country clubs about how their tennis communities have embraced pickleball.
Jefferson County Courthouse court is a multi-use court for tennis and pickleball.
The tennis court was installed in the 1970s and had pickleball lines painted on it in 2012.
Example of two tennis courts with pickleball lines. Bricks are used to lower the net.
Congressman Joel Pritchard, Barney McCallum, and Bill Bell invented the game of Pickleball one summer afternoon in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, WA. In Barney's own words, here is the story, along with views of the original (and oldest) pickleball courts in the world.
Ben Sanders, Sequim Picklers board member, talks about membership, activities and gives a PickleBall playing tip.
Transcript Excerpt
Hi my name is Ben Sanders. I’m director of court operations for the Sequim Picklers in Sequim, Washington. We are presently at the Boys and Girls Club which we rent on weekends for indoor play. When it it raining, which it is doing now. So we have an indoor venue.
We have a hundred and thirty-four members at present. We would love to have anyone in the Sequim area, even on the peninsula, join us. We have several people from Port Townsend and numerous people from Port Angeles that come to play with us and are members of our club. And we’d love to have you.
We play Pickleball. You see the venue behind me. We end up with between 25 and 35 people on Saturdays and Sundays each day. And then we play seven days a week. That is Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9 o’clock in the morning till noon. Tuesdays and Thursdays from three o’clock until five. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at three o’clock, we also has free instruction for anyone, member or non-member, to come and learn how to play the game of Pickleball.
Jack Olmsted, Videoblogging 206: How do you become a member?
Ben: You can come to any of our events seven days a week, Monday though Friday, plus Saturdays and Sundays indoor at the Boys/Girls Club and at any of those events we will have cards ready for you to sign for membership.
Membership is not very expensive, it is a little over buck a month. So, you’re at fifteen dollars a year for membership. We will then explain what we are doing. We are in the process, right now, of building our own courts that will be at Carrie Blake Park near the dog park. We are looking to build 12 courts ourselves. The city has chipped in.
We have raised well over $116,000 ourselves. So that we can end up with a state-of-the- art facility for members to play at and we will also open it up to the public."
"While searching for the most beautiful pickleball courts in Washington State, we received a call from Terri Ross in Port Ludlow. She confessed about her addiction to pickleball, and, she told us that she had built her own indoor pickleball court and christened it the “Pickleball Palace!”
Can you be any more of a fan of pickleball than Terri Ross? Terri loves to play pickleball. She played with her mother 30 years ago. As pickleball has grown in popularity, the Port Ludlow Resort built some beautiful outdoor pickleball courts. Since Terri and her husband built an indoor tennis court for resort members to keep playing tennis in the winter, they were asked, once again, if they might consider building an indoor pickleball court as well.
This request was what spurred their imagination to consider building an indoor pickleball court. They had land next to their house, so they scraped off the existing building and began to plan."
