Pickleball enthusiasts showed up en masse on Tuesday, April 5, waving their paddles high, to support a Long Beach City Council item to explore ways the City can improve its pickleball infrastructure.
Those changes could include turning tennis courts into multi-use courts using striping, setting up storage boxes for rackets and nets, or building dedicated pickleball courts—if the City can secure funding.
This year, pickleball was named the fastest growing sport in America for the second year in a row, with 4.8 million players nationwide and a growth of almost 40% in the last two years, according to data from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.
Like the rest of the nation, pickleball has gripped Long Beach—with multiple pickleball groups across the city, the largest of which meet at Bayshore Playground, Marina Vista Park and College Estates Park.
Last year, Parks and Recreation Director Brent Dennis was taken on a tour of the Seal Beach Tennis Center by Partners of Parks Board Member Mark Hardison, an avid pickleball player.
“Come to find on the tour that almost half of the people playing pickleball at the Seal Beach Tennis Center were Long Beach residents,” Dennis told the Signal Tribune. “So that, to me, expressed a huge unmet recreational need for people that live in Long Beach.”
But despite their numbers, these groups don’t have dedicated courts to play on.
In Long Beach, there are 67 tennis courts and one dedicated pickleball court.
“There are 26 pickleball courts in Seal Beach, and Seal Beach has a population of 1/20 of Long Beach,” pickleball player Lee Swain said during public comment.
David Anderson, member of the City’s Pickleball Advisory group, called the sport “easy to learn and addicting.” He said he’s driven as far north as Pasadena and as far south as Tustin to play on permanent courts.
He said he’d like to see Long Beach become the “mecca of pickleball for the West Coast.” Fellow players in the council chambers applauded him and waved their paddles in support.
Over the past few years, players have created makeshift courts using chalk and portable pickleball nets.
Pickleball player Jacqueline Jones said she plays pickleball four days a week, adding that her group at Marina Vista Park saw 500 players last month.
“Some days there’s 50 players sitting around all of the insides of the court, waiting for their turn to rotate in,” Jones said. She transports up to six nets in her car at once but said that she “physically can’t do that for much longer.”
These nets are set up wherever players can find a flat surface—volleyball courts, basketball courts, and often tennis courts.
And when pickleball players sequester territory on tennis courts, conflicts can arise.
At Somerset Park, pickleball players have had run-ins with local tennis players. The two sides accused one another of calling, or at least threatening to call, the police on one another.
“I know we’ve had some identified tension in some of our parks where we would encourage shared use,” Dennis said, noting that his department attempted to post “suggested hours” but that they were difficult to enforce without park staff.
Many tennis courts also carry signage that indicates “Tennis courts are for tennis play only,” creating conflict over whether pickleball players should be allowed to play there.
Somerset Park tennis player Jan McDermott told the Signal Tribune that pickleball players “monopolize” the courts, playing for hours despite the general rule that players can only play one-hour games on the court.
Since pickleball is a social group sport and one tennis court can fit four pickleball courts with four players each, there’s no exact way to figure out how long pickleball players should be able to use the courts.
“We can only play tennis here. That’s where the net is, that’s where the court is the size we need. They set up their own nets anyways,” Jan’s son Matt McDermott said. “I think that this arrangement, honestly, is best for everyone.”
Councilmember Suzie Price, who authored the pickleball item, directed staff to do community outreach with the tennis community before moving forward with plans to transition certain dual-use courts into pickleball courts.
“I believe in supporting the growth of pickleball and I think we need to add at least 20 permanent courts across the city,” Councilmember Stacy Mungo said to the applause of the crowd. “But I’m typically not a big supporter of taking from one to give to another.”
She suggested adding three tennis-sized courts in El Dorado Park for pickleball, implementing a reservation system that prioritizes Long Beach residents and creating a “trust fund” whereby players would pay a nominal fee that would support court maintenance.
The Parks Department is also in conversation with the Long Beach Unified School District to see if they could use their courts on the weekends.
Dennis said he expects his department will be able to “polish off” a pickleball master plan in the next two months.