PORT TOWNSEND — When two pickleball players stepped before the Port Townsend City Council, they not only offered an expensive gift to the city. They also painted a picture of a new lifestyle — one that saved their sanity during the past two years.
“It’s not just a game. It’s an outreach to the community. It fosters social relationships,” Lynn Pierle, Port Townsend Pickleball Club president, told the council.
“I’ve taught pickleball to people who’ve never played a sport before … You can learn it in about an hour and a half,” she added.
So Pierle and club court operations director Jim Dow began the elaborate presentation in the City Council chambers Monday night.
Their goal: Persuade the elected leaders to accept a donation of refurbished courts — at a cost of some $35,000 — at the Mountain View Center on Blaine Street.
Bill Ferguson, right, practices with fellow pickleballers Dave Holland and Susan Willis at the Jefferson County Courthouse court in Port Townsend on Tuesday evening. Other courts at the nearby Mountain View Center are to be the site of a resurfacing project donated by the growing Port Townsend Pickleball Club. (Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News)
The council voted unanimously to accept, even as Mayor David Faber noted that a bill making pickleball the official sport of Washington state won approval from the Legislature during this past session. Now it’s on Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk, waiting to be signed into law.
“This is a community asset,” said Deputy Mayor Amy Howard, adding she was delighted to learn also that pickleball, a mashup of ping pong, badminton and tennis, was invented not far away, on Bainbridge Island.
In Port Townsend, the advancement of the sport on three resurfaced, re-striped, fenced courts at Mountain View — right beside the dog park — now awaits a fundraising effort.
The pickleball club will take that on.
The group, which has grown from 40 members when it was founded three summers ago to 140 today, will lead the way, spreading the news of pickleball’s benefits all the while.
Pickleballs are already in the air around Port Townsend: outside the Jefferson County Courthouse, indoors at the Olympic Peninsula YMCA branch, on the tennis courts outside Port Townsend High School and on the Mountain View courts, which are concrete slabs with cracks.
The pickleball club’s revitalization plan for those courts includes three bright blue play spaces: two dedicated to pickleball and one multi-purpose court where basketballers can shoot hoops.
Dow stepped up after Pierle to finish the presentation to the council, underscoring pickleball’s expanding popularity. Port Angeles has six courts where tournaments are held, drawing players from out of town, while Sequim has eight new courts.
Building those cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and took 10 years of fundraising, Dow noted.
“If you look at a lot of the pickleball players, a lot of us don’t have 10 years,” he joked.
Tuesday evening, three relatively new players practiced their skills on one of the pickleball courts outside the Jefferson County Courthouse at Jefferson and Walker streets. Bill Ferguson had been playing for four days; Dave Holland for seven and Susan Willis for about two months.
Fun and camaraderie are the main things in this sport, Holland declared, while Willis invited beginners to the Port Townsend High School courts on any Saturday morning.
The Port Townsend Pickleball Club welcomes newcomers, from teens on up, Willis added.
Information about courts, classes, membership and club history can be found at www.ptpickleball.com, while the organization can be reached at ptpickleball@gmail.com and via P.O. Box 440, Port Townsend, WA 98368.
“It used to be called tennis for seniors,” Pierle acknowledged in her presentation to the City Council.
“That is no longer true,” as pickleball is now being taught in high schools and played in tournaments broadcast on television.
“It really is an explosive sport,” she said.
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Jefferson County Senior Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@ peninsuladailynews.com.
