On Tuesday, Sept 20, 2022, there was a meeting of the Parks, Greenways, and Recreation Commission Board. During this meeting, the proposal for Pickleball using the two of the remaining four Ephesus tennis courts was discussed and voted upon.
The Parks and Rec staff provided results from an earlier survey which can be seen at <SurveyResults>. Of particular interest was that 90% of the tennis respondents were from CH/Orange County as opposed to 52% of PickleBall. The tennis community has always talked about how tennis is serving the local community families and citizens, which was verified in this statistic.
Representatives and players for both PickleBall and Tennis were given time to speak about their sport and facility needs. We should thank and compliment all the speakers for doing a good job of telling their stories. In general, the PickleBall speakers talked about the fun and excitement of the sport and the growing popularity and the need for more facilities.
The tennis speakers talked also about the passion of the sport, increasing numbers of tennis players evidenced by tennis clubs having wait lists to join, the poor conditions due to neglect of the tennis courts, the distractions from having additional lines on courts as shown in <DistractingLines>, and basically asking for the board to preserve the few remaining public tennis courts.
It was also noted that when/if the courts at Cedar Falls and Hargraves are renovated, it is expected to take up to a year of construction. Where will players at these courts go to play tennis? During this period and if two Ephesus are dedicated for PickleBall, then Chapel Hill would only have two available public tennis courts for the whole town to use. Imagine an university town of this size with only two public tennis courts!
The tennis community agrees that the town needs to investigate options for providing additional PickleBall courts. The only difference between the two groups, is that the additional courts should not take away from other sports, be at the expense of other sports, or require other sports to sacrifice. Otherwise, it feels more like an invasion instead of sharing.
After hearing all the discussion, the board members voted on two resolutions:
- Keep the four remaining tennis courts at Ephesus as tennis courts at least until Cedar Falls and Hargraves are renovated.
- Resolve to ask town and others to look for options for adding additional PickleBall courts and/or complex given the anticipated growth of the sport.
We (our local tennis community of families, students, camps and clinics, youth, adults) thank the Commissioners. First, it appeared they had studied to be aware of the issues and background. They also listened to the participants and asked really pertinent questions.
Ultimately, they found the Win-Win solution which is the fairness sought by the tennis community.
Going forward, we ask that the town continues to work with the local tennis community to preserve and improve our CH public tennis courts and facilities. We guarantee that tennis players who previously left will return back to the public tennis courts once they are safe and desirable places to play. Let’s all work together to make that happen.
