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pickleball

    RACKET

    Pickleball Players and Peeved Neighbors Trade Volleys

    Select board lobs noise problem to town manager

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Complaints about pickleball started with a trickle but have become a torrent, prompting 50 people to crowd into town hall and on Zoom on June 27 to ask the select board to mediate a dispute between those passionately attached to the sport and courtside neighbors who say the game is intolerably noisy.

    Many in the crowd came with “I support pickleball” name tags stuck to their chests.

    “I did not think it was possible to find more joy in Provincetown, but I did find it in pickleball,” said Ken Fulk, a part-time resident for 31 years. “We live in a tiny town on top of each other. I wake up to trucks backing up from Liz’s market. I don’t complain because I love it. It is the compromise we make.”

    Lindsay Davis said she has met many younger people through the sport. “We are truly friends and that never would have happened if it were not for pickleball,” she said.

    Neighbors of the Nickerson Street playground, where two pickleball courts were striped last summer, had a different perspective.

    “The constant banging of the ball — it is what I wake up to, it is what I work to,” said Judy Gold of 25 Tremont St.

    The select board received 43 emails on the topic, 4 against pickleball and 40 in favor. Eight letters came from direct abutters to the Nickerson Street courts. Of those, 4 favored the sport and 4 were against, said Elizabeth Paine, the select board secretary.

    Pickleball has dominated recreation commission meetings for nine months, said chair Catherine Nagorski.

    Several months ago, the commission formed a pickleball subcommittee with two Nickerson Street neighbors, one “pickleball advocate,” one commission member, and a neighbor of Motta Field, where tennis courts double as pickleball courts.

    The subcommittee recommended that the town buy soundproofing for the courts. A recreation gift fund paid half of the $26,000 cost, Nagorski said. The other $13,000 was raised through a social media donation campaign, said Mike Miller, the commission member who served on the pickleball subcommittee.

    Volunteers then spent five days erecting fencing around the Nickerson Street courts, Miller said, finishing on June 19. Miller told the select board the fencing reduces noise significantly. The neighbors say it doesn’t work.

    The recreation dept. had agreed to limit pickleball hours, with play allowed from noon to 7 p.m. on some days and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on others. Recreation Director Brandon Motta recommended keeping those hours, but the commission overruled him. Having put in all that work, the members wanted the old 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. hours back, Miller said.

    Select board member Leslie Sandberg said they should have listened to Motta. “I’m trying to find a compromise,” Sandberg said.

    The board directed Town Manager Alex Morse to help find solutions, perhaps spreading out pickleball time with reduced hours at Nickerson Street and more hours at the community center gym and at Motta Field.

    Building a court out of town sounds like a great plan. But where? The vacant ground by the transfer station is owned by the Cape Cod National Seashore, Nagorski said. And a town soccer field by Route 6 must remain grass because it sits atop a leaching field, said select board chair David Abramson.

    Nagorski and Miller both told the Independent they are grateful that Alex Morse is taking over.

    “He has the ability to make things happen more than I do,” Miller said. “Maybe it’s an opportunity for something good to come out of this mess.”

    PROVINCETOWN: THIS WEEK'S CURRENTS

    Virtual Support Groups

    By

    Some meetings are in person, some online, and some are both. Go to provincetown-ma.gov and click on the meeting you want to watch to see if a remote option is available.

    Thursday, Feb. 3

    • Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m.

    Tuesday, Feb. 8

    • Licensing Board, 5:15 p.m.
    • Select Board, 6 p.m.

    Wednesday, Feb. 9

    • Cemetery Commission, 3 p.m.
    • Community Preservation Committee, 1 p.m.

    Thursday, Feb. 10

    • Planning Board, 6 p.m.

    Conversation Starters

    Virtual Support Groups

    The Provincetown Covid-19 Task Force is offering a free clinician-led virtual community drop-in support group every week.

    There are to be two groups — one for adults and another designed for youth ages 16 to 24. The adult group meets on Mondays at 6 p.m., and the youth group’s start date has not been announced. The groups will meet weekly until March.

    Jeff Driskell, a licensed social worker, is the facilitator. The groups are being created because Covid-19 has led to more “depression, anxiety, people not being able to connect, and an increase in isolation,” said Elspeth Slayter, who teaches at Salem State University, lives in Provincetown, and will co-lead the program.

    Pickleball Postponed

    A decision on whether pickleball courts should be opened at the East End basketball courts on Howland Street was postponed until the next recreation committee meeting, following nearly an hour of debate at the Feb.1 meeting.

    Committee members said postponement was in order because they needed more time to reach abutters and to refute inaccurate information about the pickleball expansion. For example, the pickleball lines would be painted only on the rear court, said Recreation Director Brandon Motta. It’s also only a short-term solution until Motta Field is renovated to include more pickleball options.

    Before Tuesday’s meeting, the committee received 28 letters opposing the expansion and two letters supporting it. When the meeting was opened to public comment, nearly two dozen people offered diverging views on pickleball’s future in the East End neighborhood.

    Those against expansion said pickleball players would intimidate basketball players, take away space from families, and add noise to a quiet part of town. Those in favor said more space for pickleball would lower congestion at other courts and build community. —Michaela Chesin

    POPULARITY CONTEST

    West End in a Pickle Over Popular Sport

    Town reduces hours at the pickleball court after volley of complaints

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — How heated is the debate about the West End pickleball courts? If the swear words were left in everyone’s statements, this article would be two inches longer.

    “I’m going to lose my mind,” said Ernest Martin of 19 Tremont St. “I can hear it with all my windows closed. I’m having dreams about pickleball.”

    Martin is one of many neighbors irked by the noise coming from the new pickleball courts on Nickerson Street, which the recreation commission completed in July with a $50,000 grant from the community preservation committee.

    Martin said the pitch of the plastic balls against the wooden paddles sounds like a hammer hitting a two-by-four. He cannot wait to go back to Manhattan in January to get some peace and quiet.

    Judy Gold, a comedian who lives at 25 Tremont St., wrote to the recreation commission last month to say “the serenity and peace I counted on has now been drowned out by the loud and intrusive sounds of 12 hours a day of pickleball. I’m not only referring to the constant loud noise of the ball hitting the paddle, but also the screaming and yelling after each and every point. I have an apartment in New York City on Amsterdam Avenue, a major thoroughfare for buses, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, and it is quieter there than in my home here in P’town.”

    “Silence is now the exception, and the sound of pickleball is the norm,” wrote Barry Pike and Paul Carey of 25 Tremont St.

    Pickleball was invented in 1965 and incorporates a ping-pong-like paddle on a badminton-sized court using a sort of tennis net. The area of play is smaller and the game less physically demanding than tennis, making it accessible to all ages. It has become the fastest growing sport in America, according to the Economist.

    People dragged a portable pickleball net onto the basketball court at the Chelsea Earnest Playground during the pandemic. Hoping to support a healthy habit, the town recreation dept. completed striping of two pickleball courts there in July, said Recreation Director Brandon Motta. That is when attendance went from sparse to something else.

    “We have had as many as 15 people waiting in line, early morning and after work,” Motta said.

    Lourdes Rodriguez lives near the pickleball courts and loves the game. But “nobody wants to be a nuisance to neighbors,” she says. (Photos K.C. Myers)

    On a Friday in late October, both courts on Nickerson Street were full, with four people waiting to play. In spite of battle lines drawn around them, those inside the fence were blissful. The courts are free, and everyone rotates in and out of multiple games, so there is no need to reserve a time, explained Linda Davis. You end up playing with complete strangers at all different skill levels. The result, Davis said, is community-building, fitness, and friendship.

    “These two courts have brought people together,” Davis said.

    Not long ago, Diane Sidorowicz hit what she described as the best shot of her life. “Oh my God!” she cried in delight.

    “Oh my God,” came a sarcastic voice from somewhere in the neighborhood.

    Sidorowicz recognized it as the voice of one of her neighbors. Sidorowicz and her partner, Lourdes Rodriguez, live nearby and love the game.

    But “nobody wants to be a nuisance to neighbors,” Rodriguez said.

    Pickleball is a sensation throughout the nation. Retirement communities from Florida to California have hired lawyers to hammer out compromises related to pickleball noise. Mashpee has engaged a consultant to come up with noise mitigation for the pickleball courts on Ashumet Road, said Town Manager Rodney Collins.

    Another voice in the debate are basketball players, who feel pushed out of the Chelsea Earnest Playground.

    In the spring, Christopher Millan, 12, of North Truro showed up to shoot some hoops.

    “I got there first,” said Millan, who attends the Provincetown Schools. “And then these guys set up pickleball right in front of me while I was still playing.”

    Derek Reyes Millan and his friends haven’t been able to shoot hoops since pickleball came to town.

    “I think they should build more basketball courts for the people in that area,” added his cousin, Derek Reyes Millan, 13, of Eastham.

    On Oct. 13, the commission voted to reduce the pickleball hours. It had been allowed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; now the hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    The winter weather may bring a reprieve so the recreation commission can come up a plan, which may include renovating the rundown tennis and pickleball courts at Motta Field — farther from neighbors’ ears. The estimated cost of that is $100,000, Motta said.

    They are considering adding sound barriers to the chain link fence at Nickerson Street, which might reduce the noise by as much as 50 percent, if the barriers work as advertised. The cost is about $9,000, Motta said.

    “It is inappropriate for anyone to condemn outdoor activities promoting community team-building activities, sports, and enjoyment of our seaside fresh air,” said Brandon Quesnell of the Provincetown Recreation Commission on Sept. 29. People who choose to live next to a playground should expect it, he added.

    But, Motta told the Independent, “It is really loud.”

    THE PICKLEBALL CRAZE

    Pickleball Players Bring Their Passion, and Their Nets

    An out-of-town trend gains a growing local following

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The Outer Cape community likes its own local vibe. But some out-of-town trends might be healthy ones. Case in point: pickleball. The sport, which is a mix of tennis and ping pong, has become increasingly popular across the four towns.

    “I started to play with some friends a couple years back,” Kim Cromwell said. “Then I went all in. I decided to get my own net.”

    Pickleball players Judy Linen, Lynne Kirouac, Kim Cromwell, and Donna Cooper bring their own net to the Chelsea Earnest Memorial Playground in Provincetown’s West End. (Photo courtesy Elizabeth G. Brooke)

    Cromwell, who spends half her year in Provincetown and half in St. Petersburg, Fla., normally plays at the Chelsea Earnest Memorial Playground in Provincetown, where two courts are located. But the courts don’t have nets or lines — pickleball dimensions are smaller and the net lower than those used for tennis — so it’s a B.Y.O.N. (bring your own net) game.

    “A few of us got out there and created pickleball lines using tape and chalk,” Cromwell said. “People would walk by on Nickerson Street and say, ‘What is that? Can I join?’ I met a whole community in Provincetown through pickleball,” Cromwell said.

    It seems there’s a Provincetown-Florida pickleball connection of sorts. One of the people Cromwell met through the sport was Beth Goldstein, who also lives in Provincetown and Florida.

    “In Florida, it’s crazy,” Goldstein said. She’s quick to point out that, in spite of its reputation, pickleball is not just a game for older players. There, the courts are “packed with people of all different ages and skill, she said. Goldstein admits the game is “a little addicting.”

    Cherie Mittenthal, who is the executive artistic director of Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, credits her late wife, Mary Dorothy “Dotty” Mulcahy, for helping introduce pickleball to the Outer Cape.

    Dotty had lived in Truro, then moved for a time to warmer locales. When she moved back to the Outer Cape in 2014, Mittenthal said, she brought the sport she’d picked up in Tennessee and Arizona to Truro and Provincetown. “She turned a lot of people on to it,” Mittenthal said.

    Artist Jen Rumpza also recalled Mulcahy’s role in bringing the game to town. Rumpza said she had played the sport in Boston, but it wasn’t until she moved to Provincetown full-time that she found a group of dedicated pickleball players.

    “Dotty brought pickleball to the Outer Cape originally,” Rumpza said. Mulcahy died in 2019, so last year the community of players held a “pickleball extravaganza” in her honor.

    In Eastham, there are two outdoor courts with lines and nets located behind town hall. Truro has pickleball available at the community center. But the pickleball players see room for improvement in Provincetown and Wellfleet.

    Goldstein noted that simple fixes would make a big difference. For example, the recreation dept. could tape pickleball lines and purchase nets on wheels for the courts. Part of the problem, she believes, is that a lot of people in town don’t see recreation as a priority.

    Provincetown’s situation may be improving. Recreation Director Brandon Motta said the two courts at the playground are currently being resurfaced and the thought is that this will include the introduction of lines on the court.

    Cromwell is pleased about that. “Provincetown has been wonderful with us in repaving the courts,” she said. Though whether the courts will remain B.Y.O.N. remains to be seen.

    There’s also the possibility of pickleball finding a home at Motta Field. At the May 1 town meeting, voters approved an item as part of the community preservation committee’s fiscal 2022 budget for $100,000 for a master plan for the playing field.

    “The $100,000 approved at town meeting represents a community planning effort that will be led by a professional park consultant that will decide future upgrades to Motta Field,” Motta said in an email. “The department wants Motta Field to reach its full potential by planning for updates that more accurately meets the needs of all Provincetown community members.”

    Pickleball will most likely be a part of that discussion.

    In Wellfleet, where Goldstein’s girlfriend, Liz Grant, lives, the courts have been closed since the fall because of needed repairs.

    Goldstein has her eye on those courts. “I’d like to go play there today,” she said.

    Another issue is that players, even Wellfleet residents, have to pay to use those courts.

    Wellfleet Recreation Director Becky Rosenberg said in a May 10 email that the courts will be undergoing repairs — they’re under warranty, she said — next week and she hopes to have them open by the week of May 17.

    People of all ages can play pickleball. While it’s true that players skew older, not just here on the Outer Cape but across the country, USA Pickleball reports that is changing.

    The average age of what they call core players — people who play eight or more times per year — is 51.5. But between 2015 and 2019 the proportion of core players ages 54 and younger grew from 25 percent to 40 percent, according to USA Pickleball.

    What’s next for pickleball? “We’re hoping to make it an Olympic sport,” Cromwell said.

    RACKET REPORT

    Tennis and Pickleball Return

    Local courts open up for players

    By

    Provincetown Tennis Club
    At the Provincetown Tennis Club, Doug Coelho shows off his balletic net game against Peter Gherardi and Jim Veninger, across the net at right and left. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    Pickleball is helping Sheila Garry get back to a sense of normalcy. She says that’s what almost everyone who’s coming back to the sport is talking about.

    On June 1, Gov. Charlie Baker authorized certain sports activities, including outdoor pickleball and tennis, to commence as part of phase two of the state’s reopening plan.

    “I think a lot of people are willing to put their feet in the water and start wading in, if you will,” Garry said.

    She is a resident of Eastham and an avid pickleball player. The sport is basically a miniature and slower version of tennis and has grown in popularity across the Cape in recent years, with Outer Cape aficionados hitting the courts in Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans, and some driving further up Cape to play. Eastham’s court, new in 2018, was part of the rehabilitation of the town’s Field of Dreams, funded with Community Preservation Act funds voted on in 2016.

    While Wellfleet and Provincetown have closed their outdoor recreation areas, the Eastham Recreation Dept. opted to keep its basketball and pickleball courts open throughout the pandemic. The town placed signs on the fences of the courts urging those who participated to follow the state’s guidelines on social distancing.

    At the recreation commission’s May 13 meeting, recreation director Christine Mickle said the town opted to keep the courts open because people were following the guidelines and playing in small groups.

    “It’s been awesome that they left the pickleball courts open,” Garry said.

    The state has posted special rules for using athletic fields, tracks, tennis courts, and full-size basketball courts. First, players sharing such spaces must separate into groups of no more than 10. Larger playing areas and surfaces may be used by more than one group of 10 at a time, provided that adequate social distance and group separation can be maintained. To ensure group separation, groups must be spaced at least 20 feet apart.

    It’s not all about pickleball. Local tennis courts have begun reopening, too.

    Steve Oliver of Oliver’s Red Clay Tennis in Wellfleet said that he’s reopened one of his courts, but the number of players participating is still very limited.

    “I usually don’t get busy until the end of June,” Oliver said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

    Oliver’s concern goes beyond the coronavirus; it’s about the fact that tennis has been a declining sport for years.

    “Its heyday was in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said. “Tennis membership is not what it used to be, and younger people don’t seem to be playing tennis.”

    At the same time, Oliver has watched the popularity of pickleball grow, and knows that’s what some of his older players are graduating to. Traditional tennis is played on a 78-foot-long court, he explained, while pickleball is played on a 44-foot-long court. Tennis uses woven rackets with a tennis ball that can travel at a much higher speed than the paddle and plastic ball with holes, basically a whiffleball, used in pickleball. “The reason people have taken to that game is because you don’t need to run as much,” Oliver said.

    The Chequessett Yacht and Country Club in Wellfleet, Pamet Tennis Club in Truro, and Provincetown Tennis Club have all opened for the summer season under state and individual court guidelines. For a full list of guidelines visit each club’s website.

    Wellfleet’s public outdoor tennis courts remain closed. That’s not because of the coronavirus, but because they’re undergoing repairs, according to Suzanne Grout Thomas, director of community services in Wellfleet.

    “The tennis courts will be closed until necessary repairs have been completed,” Thomas said by email last week. As for when they’ll be ready for play, “We are waiting for a schedule of repairs from the contractor,” she wrote.

    Charlie Costa, who runs the Pamet Club, said the hard court and one of the clay courts at the club are open and available for members and court rentals at this time. “We will have reduced staff hours, so we will not be open and available as much for rentals,” Costa said via email.

    Mask-wearing norms during play vary from court to court, it seems. Garry said that although her pickleball playing friends are keeping their distance from one another, most are not wearing masks. Oliver said he is not requiring players to wear masks, either. He is leaving that to players’ discretion.

     

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