HomeMy WebLinkAbout3/4/2020 Item 4, Blair
Wilbanks, Megan
From:
PM
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:PRC Communication: Mar 4 Agenda topic #4: Tennis and Pickleball
Court Schedule
Attachments:SLO Tennis Pickleball Letter to PRC 2020 03 01.pdf
Please see attached letter submitted to PRC commissioners in advance of meeting March 4 in regards to
proposed court scheduling at French Park.
Thank you,
Rick Blair
805-825-1056
1
March 1, 2020
Dear Parks & Recreation Commissioners,
My name is Rick Blair. I’m a SLO resident, tennis player and a pickleball player. My
parents put a tennis racquet in my hands at 3 years old and I never stopped playing
until a few years ago when elbow tendonitis paused my tennis game. I started playing
pickleball as a substitute and love it. I’m happy to say I’m playing tennis again as well
as pickleball.
My SLO pickleball experience has been phenomenal. Players welcome new players,
instruction is provided weekly and fun is emphasized over competition.
A few months ago, I inherited the attendance tracking for the SLO Pickleball Club. Over
the past three years, we’ve tracked daily participation levels across
multiple sites. Pickleball participation in SLO has doubled from 2017 to
2019 and high growth is expected to continue in the future. Here’s a graph showing
monthly activity. The solid green line indicates total pickleball participation. The dotted
green line represents linear trend.
Attendance tracking at French Park captures daily counts of players on upper pickleball
courts and lower tennis court. We count tennis and pickleball separately for lower
French court. Over the past 6 months, pickleball demand far exceeds capacity of upper
French courts. Lower French courts continue to get heavy usage. In fact, 97% of lower
French usage comes from pickleball. Here’s a bar chart and table showing usage by
month.
One might wonder if the tennis players get no court time because pickleball is
monopolizing court access. Well, we can see in the tables below that Tuesday and
Wednesday mornings are designated for tennis play. For the 26 Tuesdays in the past 6
months, tennis activity occurred 18 times or 69%. For the 26 Wednesdays, tennis
activity occurred 4 times or 15%. That means that for 22 Wednesdays, no tennis
players showed up to play and pickleball players watched an empty court.
It seems to me that we ought to be talking about how to further support the successful
growth of pickleball as an activity that encourages healthy exercise and community
socialization. The new upper French courts are a strong step is the right direction;
however, the data above clearly show that reducing pickleball court access at lower
French will harm many more people than it will help.
Tennis is important too. I understand the need to provide access to tennis courts and
want that access as an active tennis player. On Friday 2/28/2020 at 10 am, I
visited Sinsheimer Park tennis courts and observed 5 of 6 courts occupied and one
vacant court. Also, I visited Islay Hill Park at 10:15 am and observed the one court to
be vacant. While one day observation is insufficient with which to make any conclusion,
it raises the question about tennis court access. What would we learn if we had 6
months of data on tennis court usage in SLO? Could players find adequate tennis court
availability without impacting the active, growing pickleball community?
Thank you for your consideration of the above.
Sincerely,
Rick Blair