Pickleball vs. tennis in a battle for space in downtown Williams Lake

Pickleball scored a point against tennis players in the lakecity at the regular council meeting on May 29.

As city staff presented their plan to resurface and repaint the courts in downtown Williams Lake, a group of pickleball players and two tennis players waited in the gallery to hear the council’s decision.

City staff were planning to resurface and repaint the Kiwanis Tennis & Pickleball Courts in the downtown, which started out as two tennis courts but have since been converted into two pickleball courts on one side and a dual purpose pickleball and tennis court on the other.

However, while tennis players hoped to have a court to themselves when it was repainted, pickleball players wanted to see the stripes of their sport return to the court.

Options presented to council were to paint the tennis and pickleball court lines, in differing colours; or to paint only tennis court lines on the one remaining tennis court surface.

Staff had presented a report which recommended retaining the remaining tennis court in the community with only tennis lines after consulting with user groups.

Council members discussed other options and eventually voted to direct staff to repaint the court with both the pickle ball lines and the tennis court lines, contrary to the staff’s recommendations.

Councillor Scott Nelson moved to change the recommendation by staff to paint both the tennis and pickleball paint lines on the courts.

“There is no doubt that both tennis and pickleball have become very exciting sports. Tennis has the legacy, pickleball has certainly revved it’s engines up and I think last year — top of my head it was close to $60,000 that we put in last year over the last 24 months, in moving it forward,” he said, noting how popular the sport has become and said he’d be supporting looking for ways to expand.

Councillor Joan Flaspohler said she supported both groups having access to play their sports.

“We really shouldn’t be at a point where we’re going ‘we want this one, we want this one,’” she said, noting the city used to have multiple tennis courts.

Flaspohler suggested using existing park space to be able to expand to provide more opportunities for sport for both groups.

“I am all about recreation, livability,” she said. She encouraged the pickleball club to look at other locations the city might be able to develop to expand pickleball capacity and said it would take a commitment from citizens, the city and staff to make it happen.

The city provides four indoor pickleball courts during the summer and helps with access to space to play during the winter in the high school gym. Tennis has the one outdoor spot to play, seasonally.

Eleven people wrote in letters to council regarding the plan, with nine of the letters in support of retaining the tennis court and two in favour of pickleball lines on the tennis court. One tennis player wrote council to say she found the presence of large numbers of pickleball players intimidating, which prevented her from feeling comfortable playing tennis next to them.

Flaspohler asked for a parks, recreation and cultural advisory committee to help address these issues and work with the user groups in the future to create conversations around these types of issues before they come to council and to find potential room for expansion instead of having to take space away from another user group.

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