Pickleball players in Baltimore County say they are, well, in a pickle.
There are not enough courts to handle the people who are grabbing pickleball paddles and playing the nation’s fastest growing sport.
One of the county’s senior centers, a hotbed for pickleball, challenged the county executive to build more courts, and to bring his best game.
At a February budget town hall, dozens of people from the Jacksonville Senior Center were waving pickleball paddles at County Executive Johnny Olszewski.
“I knew I should have brought my paddle tonight,” Olszewski said.
A couple of years ago, Olszewski played his first game ever at the senior center. He lost. At the town hall he said he was ready for a rematch.
Olszewski said, “I’ve been playing quite a bit so I’m ready to bring my A game back to Jacksonville.”
Well, maybe not.
On Monday, Olszewski returned to do pickleball battle with the Jacksonville seniors. Playing doubles, his team lost 11-5.
“I felt like it was a lot more competitive this time so looking forward to continuing to get better,” Olszewski said.
What the seniors want from this pickleball lobbying are six courts when a planned new center is built. Construction is expected to begin in late 2025. They currently can use three inside an adjoining rec center that were created on a basketball court.
“We have hundreds of people who are on our pickleball roster,” said Barbara Franke, the director of the Jacksonville Senior Center. “They love it. They look forward to it.”
Instructor Ken Lucas said it’s hard to meet demand.
“We’re getting some people who may have been on the couch for two or three years and now they’re coming out all of a sudden,” Lucas said. They are starting to move. They’re starting to feel good about themselves and they’re having fun.”
Pickleball is a mashup of tennis, ping-pong and badminton. You can fit up to four pickleball courts on one tennis court. That means less running around. There also are rules like underhand serves that lessen the importance of power.
“There’s not a huge advantage to having that perfect serve,” said instructor Kim Tawney. “You don’t have to practice it forever and ever. You just have to get it in the service area.”
Instructor Ed Fields said then there’s the all important dink shot.
“Which in pickleball is just tapping the ball real light over the net,” said Fields.
Vince Vanneman has been playing for a little over a year.
“It takes you about 20 minutes to learn how to play the basics,” Vanneman said. “It takes you about a week to learn how to keep score.”
It’s not just the senior centers looking for more pickleball courts in Baltimore County.
The popping of pickleball and the roar of I-695 can be heard at Seminary Park in Lutherville. The county created six pickleball courts by painting lines on two tennis courts.
Ross Germano, who leads the Lutherville-Timonium Recreation Council pickleball group, said before they got those permanent pickleball court lines they were taking matters into their own hands.
Germano said, “We kind of ran afoul of them a couple of times for putting tape down when we weren’t supposed to put tape. But nobody really knew that we weren’t supposed to put tape down.”
Germano said last year 500 available slots to play were taken within three weeks. What Germano and self-described pickleball queen Lucy Wilder would like to see is a facility dedicated to pickleball.
Wilder said, “I just don’t think it’s right that we’re playing on a bunch of old tennis courts.”
There are privately-run pickleball facilities in the Baltimore area but they come with membership fees and court costs.
Bob Smith, Baltimore County’s Director of Recreation and Parks, said the demand for pickleball is county wide, crosses generations and that the 129 courts they have are not enough.
Smith said pickleball is no fad.
“Everyone is playing it,” Smith said. “I think we’re going to be talking about pickleball for quite some time.”
Smith said parks and rec. is responsible for courts at the county elementary schools so there is potential for pickleball there.
“We’ve already begun the work to do the courts at elementary schools where appropriate,” Smith said.
For example, he said they replaced tennis courts with pickleball at Catonsville Elementary School.
Smith said it’s important to strike a balance so that tennis players don’t get aced out by pickleball enthusiasts.
“We have a very focused, active tennis group in some of the same areas,” Smith said.
County Executive Olszewski presents his budget next month, and that’s when the pickleball players will find out if they scored by dinking for dollars.
