Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the country according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
The number of people playing pickleball has grown by 159 percent over the past three years.
Two of the Greensboro City Council’s seven priorities have to do with Greensboro becoming a mecca for sports and recreation: youth sports capital of the Southeast and entertainment and recreation hub.
However, a recent survey by Lawn Love ranked Greensboro as the 121st best city for pickleball in the country. Considering the fact that in Greensboro, a city of 300,000 people, the parks and recreation department has six dedicated public pickleball courts, it is somewhat surprising that Greensboro ranked that high on the list.
Along with dedicated pickleball courts, the survey also considered “pickleball facilities,” which are tennis courts with pickleball lines painted on them. As the survey notes, these are not real pickleball courts, but places where pickleball can be played but some popular shots are not possible. It’s kind of like putting a basketball goal in a warehouse with 14-foot ceilings and calling it a basketball court.
The survey also considered pickleball courts at places that charged a membership fee or a fee to play, but these did not receive the same weight as free public courts.
New York ranked number one in the survey with an overall score of 76.65, while Greensboro at number 121 had an overall score of 5.4.
Charlotte, by comparison, ranked 8th with an overall score of 37.08 and Raleigh ranked 49th with an overall score of 14.84. Durham, which is essentially the same size in population as Greensboro, ranked 94th with an overall score of 7.73.
Greensboro did beat out Winston-Salem, which ranked 131 with an overall score of 4.26, and Fayetteville, which ranked 146 with an overall score of 2.99.
While the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department only has six dedicated pickleball courts, Greensboro’s ranking was improved by Guilford County having 10 dedicated pickleball courts at Bur-Mil Park.
please keep smut out of your ‘forum’: pickleball lovers ?
Pickleball. Really. What a joke!
Guess this is one way to keep the Pickleball community from marching in front of John’s office about not giving enough pub on the “sport”.