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In another summer of our discontent, there’s a new contagion spreading across the U.S. and it’s tearing the nation apart. It’s what should be an enjoyable past-time, but is turning divisive.
It’s pickleball.
This sport, which has spread rapidly from the Pacific Northwest, has soured in communities across the U.S.
The game is pitting neighbor against neighbor. On one side of the net are the picklers; on the other side, those folks who live near public parks where pickleball courts are normally mobbed daily from dawn to dusk. Police have been called to hinder the racket.
Instead of concentrating on the rules of a sport described as fun by players, units of government are backhanding each other. They’re past the court of public opinion, and are threatening play in courts of law.
That may be where the village of Lake Bluff and the Lake Bluff Park District end up after district commissioners had pickleball courts installed at Blair Park on Green Bay Road, north of Rockland Road. Nearby residents complained of noise emanating from the games, some of which had been starting at 5 a.m.
Village officials contend the Park District needed a zoning change to convert tennis courts to pickleball courts. Park District officials say they don’t need Lake Bluff’s approval for any leisure and recreational usages on their properties, according to Daniel Dorfman’s front-page News-Sun story of July 26.
It certainly is a pickle. Complaints about games effecting residents’ quality of life also have occurred in a Libertyville subdivision a swat or two away from Paul Neal Park.
Surely, that’s something the Washington State inventors of the game didn’t see happening in the future. It was in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, an idyllic locale off Seattle in Puget Sound, that the game came about to occupy bored kids one summer.
They also didn’t foresee that with its growth, the game would lead to some 67,000 emergency department visits, 366,000 outpatient visits, 8,800 outpatient surgeries, 4,700 hospitalizations and 20,000 post-acute injury episodes, according to an analysis by UBS Group AG. Direct costs from pickleball injuries will top $377 million in 2023, the financial services firm predicts, mostly due to wrist, lower leg, head or lower trunk injuries.
The sport, which has become an obsession for some who partake, uses elements of tennis, pingpong and badminton. The culprit behind many of the neighborly complaints is the ball, a modified Wiffle ball, which causes what has been described as a continual and irritating “pop, pop, pop” noise when it strikes a pickler’s paddle.
The sound was so extreme for one Canadian couple that they went on a short hunger strike after authorities in their British Columbia town failed to heed their yearlong carping, according to a Washington Post story last month. Their protestations did result in plans for an indoor pickleball facility, and the promised closing of the offending outdoor courts.
In Chicago, dueling petitions for and against the sport surfaced after courts were introduced in a neighborhood park and objections arose because of noise. Then, there are complaints about coarse language used by Pickleheads.
In Libertyville, homeowners stormed a Village Board meeting last month complaining about pickleball play. One resident living near Paul Neal Park, located between Butterfield and Peterson roads, asked if it was fair the once-quiet subdivision, “shoulders the burden for the whole town’s pickleball fetish?”
Another resident, who said she represented more than 250 pickleball players, told officials the park was not a good choice for new courts. “Until those courts went in, I don’t think anybody fully realized the consequences of the courts. The noise level … for the neighbors, is dreadful.”
The village added two pickleball courts in 2020 at Nicholas-Dowden Park off Crane Boulevard, also in the midst of a residential neighborhood. More courts are planned there, while officials are working on how to resolve the controversy.
It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that pickleball began its march toward recreational sports dominance. That explosion in popularity recalls the nation’s obsession with racquetball back in the early 1970s.
Some may remember the demand for racquetball courts then led to construction of indoor courts, such as Oakwood Racquet Club in Waukegan and Courts on 41 in Highland Park. When the trend peaked in the early ‘80s, both sites were converted into different uses.
The same fate may happen to pickleball, but currently courts for the sport are multiplying faster than rabbits this summer. Some picklers are calling for the sport to become an Olympic competition.
There is the Professional Pickleball Association, which holds tournaments where cash winnings are on the line. Gear for the sport can run upward of $1,000.
For those suffering from the pickleball outbreak, come fall the courts should quiet down at least through March. Or, the sport may fade like Hula hoops, and the next one may grab our fancy.
Anyone for full-contact croquet?
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
Twitter: @sellenews