Pickleball craze hits Montana courts

The dude in the pickle costume marching in the Plains Day parade might have been a harbinger of things to come.

Pickles on main street are just the beginning.

From Trout Creek to Thompson Falls to Plains to Hot Springs, pickleball mania has arrived in Sanders County. And it has no state-line boundaries.

Earlier this month, a Saks 5th Avenue store at a high-end mall out east became, what the new owners proclaimed, “the world’s biggest indoor pickleball” arena.

The mall closed but the sport that many equate to a combination of tennis and ping pong is thriving in its wake.

A classic example of the sports’ popularity is in the number of participants in T Falls and Hot Springs who seek, sometimes desperately, time on one of the 44 feet X 20 feet courts that have been overwhelmed in recent months.

Thompson Falls pickleballers recently worked out a deal with the city to create four of the coveted courts on city property adjacent to Thompson Falls High School that had been a long-abandoned set of tennis courts.

The pickleball club in Hot Springs, which has more than 80 members on its membership list, is in negotiations with the town to convert a patch of ground next to the town’s library into outdoor pickleball courts. Indoor courts in Hot Springs, Lone Pine and Camas Prairie have reached their limits for folks wanting to play the game.

And Plains pickleballers are working on an outdoor site at the Amundson Sports Complex near the town’s airport as a site for pickleball enthusiasts.

Demand for court time in all three areas of the county has sky-rocketed in recent months.

“We just didn’t have enough places to play,” said Thompson Falls Pickleball spokesperson Nancy Fields. “There were more people wanting court time than we had courts for.”

Fields said the T Falls club, which currently has 97 members from Trout Creek to Thompson Falls, began negotiations with the city of T Falls hoping to find a place suitable for some outdoor courts.

They found such a site on property owned by the city adjacent to the school and at a place where old tennis courts, which had not been used in years, had sat unused. With an aggressive donation campaign and help from pickleball enthusiasts, the Thompson Falls Pickleballers Club took charge of the city’s part of the tennis courts and created four new outdoor pickleball courts for members and residents.

“This was a good opportunity to get things done,” Fields said. “The city and the school district both said they had no money to help us, the but town of Thompson Falls was willing to let us put together four courts on what were old tennis courts. Having the land eliminated a very expensive part of trying to get pickle courts built.”

Fields, who has been playing the sport for at least three years, said the four courts were created on the unused tennis court surfaces for a total of $26,000, which is often the cost of building one court if land acquisition and/or preparation is part of the deal.

The club found a contractor who came in, applied a new, pickleball-friendly surface and was able make use of the idled space.

“We have at least 30 players who want to play on a regular basis,” Fields said. “This game is good for cardio workouts and a wide variety of exercise routines. And it is not hard on the joints.”

The solution in Thompson Falls, said club member Sue Borrego, solved a pressing demand for court time.

“Financing these kinds of things, in small towns,” Borrego said, “can be a major hurdle. We were able to work with the city and come up with an answer to the high demand. This sport is a social networking sport, where people get together and have fun playing a fun game that most people can play.”

The sport is played, most often, with two players per side. Games are played to 11 points, or “whatever” the players agree to among those who showed up Saturday morning to demonstrate the sport.

Thompson Falls, Borrego said, told the group to proceed with their plans but that the town did not have funds to help them, nor did the school district.

The answer, all agreed, was fund-raisers like a recent Ice Cream Social, and donations from throughout the community.

“Its a fun and easy game to learn starting out,” said Borrego. “Equipment costs for players is low.”

As with other clubs in the area, introductory, or beginner’s classes are offered, such as the one in Thompson Falls Saturday, July 29.

“We found that people who were new to town or coming through the area would often ask if there were pickleball courts in Thompson Falls,” Fields said. “We previously had a court at the Thompson Falls Elementary School, and there is an indoor court at the school in Trout Creek. The new courts help meet the demand for court time.”

Both Borrego and Fields said they hope to keep expanding the outdoor courts, and noted there is space for at least four more courts at the school site.

Similar situations exist in Hot Springs, where the local club has more than 80 members on its membership lists. Hot Springs Club president Peg Winebrenner, said the group is in negotiations with the town to build one or two courts on land adjacent to the city library. Earlier plans for a set of courts on the other side of town were scrapped when it was learned much of that land was on wetlands type terrain, which would have required extensive and costly modifications to cater to pickleball courts.

“We have been told the land by the library will be available to pickleballers,” Winebrenner said. “We are hoping to get that process moving along in the near future.”

Winebrenner said club members, who have been playing in a church gym in Hot Springs, and also at the LonePine Grange and the Camas Prairie Gym, have been working to raise funds to benefit their sport. The group says a single court can cost around $25,000 to construct.

“We were glad to have the city involved,” she said.

Hot Springs club official Dian Prongua, said club members currently play at a church in Hot Springs three mornings a week. Adding court space will allow more players to take part in the rapidly growing sport.

“The great thing about pickleball is the camaraderie and friendship it builds,” Prongua said. “It’s addictive and we all want to play and improve.”

Those sentiments were echoed by Hot Springs resident Nancy Dome, who played volleyball in her school days.

“It’s a good way to meet people you might not otherwise get out and meet,” Dome said. “It helps build eye-hand coordination and is forgiving of old injuries like so many of us have.”

In Plains, which has a similar level of demand for and interest in the sport, plans are in the negotiating phase to construct courts at the Amundson Sports Complex site near the town’s airport.

The Plains Pickleball Association has had a number of fund raisers in the past several months.

Fields said the three towns’ organizations may come together this year in a tournament the Thompson Falls club would like to host on their courts, with players from Hot Springs, Plains and T-Falls invited to attend.

All three clubs have fundraisers scheduled throughout the year to help fund their efforts to expand and grow.

The groups formed as clubs to utilize nonprofit status that helps with such fundraisers and donations.