NOT JUST TENNIS FOR OLD PEOPLE Pickleball mania hooks players of all ages and skills in northern Michigan
By Jillian Manning According to a 2022 report from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America, with 4.8 million players nationwide, up 40 percent from 2020. Northern Michigan is one of the hotspots for the sport, and was in fact one of the very first places where pickleball took hold outside its origin state of Washington. Gary Ford, eventual founder of the Traverse Area Pickleball Association (TAPA), began playing in the 1980s, long before many of us had even heard of the tennis-badmintonping-pong hybrid. “For a long time, there was only one supplier for pickleball equipment when we started playing,” Ford says. “And every time we ordered balls or paddles from them, we’d ask them, ‘Is there anybody else in our state playing?’ … And he says, ‘No, you’re it.’ So we were the first people to play in Michigan. And we’ve come to learn that we may be the first area in the country outside of Seattle to take up the sport.” Short on Courts It took decades for the sport to catch on,
not just in NoMi but around the country. Part of that, at least in our neck of the woods, was simply based on court availability. Ford began playing on a friend’s court at Torch Lake, then in the parking lot of the Grand Traverse Yacht Club, and eventually on courts at the YMCA that had to be specially lined and then unlined for each game. It took years—and a fair amount of fundraising—to get dedicated courts at the Y, which began with striping basketball courts and then some of the indoor tennis courts. Suffice to say, court time was scarce. “Our debate for a while was, since we had so few courts, we didn’t know if we wanted to invite more people to play and wake up one morning and not have the ability to get on our courts,” Ford explains. “So we were kind of unsure whether to grow the sport or just enjoy it ourselves. Eventually, we decided to share with other people, and then the sport started getting picked up by other people around the state and around the country.” The big shift locally happened when the YMCA opened its new west-side facility. Ford says that afforded TAPA the opportunity to negotiate to convert the old facility into more space for pickleball, which now offers six indoor courts. Outdoor
20 • november 07, 2022 • Northern Express Weekly
courts are a bit easier to come by—like at the Boardman Valley Nature Preserve, Slabtown Dog Park, and Grace Macdonald Park—but, of course, can only be used part of the year. Glen Arbor faced similar growing pains throughout the last decade. Ron Calsbeek, a tennis player turned pickleballer, serves as the chairman of the Glen Arbor Park and Recreation Board. He says sport’s official start was somewhat inauspicious. “We eventually arranged to have pickleball courts taped on the floor of the Town Hall [gymnasium], and people began playing there. We had three courts in that little Town Hall, but they were four feet shorter than the regulation pickleball court without that much back court. So it was kind of an unsafe situation.” Growing demand prompted the parks and rec board to seek better solutions. Soon, the Leelanau School’s gym was lined for three regulation courts, and the school’s outdoor tennis courts got a pickleball makeover too. By the time the parks’ five-year planning session came around, a public survey made it clear more pickleball space needed to be made available. That led to the installation of three dedicated outdoor courts at the Glen Arbor
Township Park. “Those courts are among the most desirable courts…people love playing pickleball in that setting, and they’re beautiful courts,” Calsbeek says. “As you can imagine, the addition of those courts then brought more and more attention to the game.” Big on Growth Calsbeek says that roughly 100 people take to the courts each day during the summer season, and play has to be limited to one hour per day to keep up with the 20-30 players waiting at any given time. Winter is a slower season—Calsbeek says the Leelanau School courts are mostly used by locals when visitors and snowbirds depart. In the TC area, Ford estimates those summer numbers are quadrupled, with 400 folks playing on any given day. And according to Grand Traverse Bay YMCA President Andrew Page, the organization sees 350-400 pickleball visits weekly during cold weather months. Grand Traverse Resort and Spa sees smaller numbers—only 36 players per week—but is now offering open play three times per week (Monday, Thursday, and Friday), learn-to-play classes, and daily court rentals.
