Could Wichita be the country’s best city for pickleball?
In the late 1990s, a small group of senior citizens in Wichita picked up a paddle sport with a funny name:
Pickleball.
They’d play at the Downtown Senior Center three days a week, and occasionally, their little games would attract media attention. Feel-good stories resulted, and readers delighted in knowing that the older set had discovered a peppy game with a silly name that would help that stay in shape. Good for them!
Now, 25 years later, pickleball is a serious business across the nation and especially in Wichita — and not just for seniors. The relish and gherkin puns have stopped as thousands of locals, both young and old, have taken up the sport, an incredibly social and relatively easy-to-master combination of tennis, ping pong and badminton. The game, which can be played with singles or doubles, uses ping pong-like paddles and holey plastic balls. The plunk of paddles hitting balls is pickleball’s signature sound.
Today, Wichita has dozens of courts, both indoor and out, both public and private, and more are coming. By the end of 2023, the city of Wichita — which just hired its first pickleball director — plans to open a 20-court “Pickleplex” at South Lakes Park.
The demand has grown so much over the past several years that public tennis courts across town have been converted into pickleball courts, and courts have also been added in rec center gyms, at churches, at colleges and at private health clubs.
The YMCA system has over the last five years added pickleball courts at most of its local facilities, and games and lessons are packed. Nearly all of Wichita’s country clubs have all added courts, too, and in addition to swimming pools and walking trails, new housing developments are now touting pickleball courts as amenities.
Chicken N Pickle — a Kansas City restaurant/pickleball concept at the Plazzio development at 13th and Greenwich — has since it opened in 2019 become one of Wichita’s top entertainment destinations, and local pickleballers say it’s helped accelerate the local craze more than almost any other factor. Derby will soon get its own version of Chicken N Pickle when The Sandbox, an 11.2-acre entertainment venue that will feature indoor and outdoor pickleball courts, sand volleyball courts and a two-story restaurant, opens this year.
Pickleball, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, has been the country’s fastest growing sport for the past two years: More than 4.8 million people are playing across the country, a growth over two years of 39.3%. And Wichita, leaders in the sport say, has somehow become one of the nation’s best cities for pickleball, one that’s managed to grow four professional pickleball players who are ranked in the top 10 nationally: Matt Wright, 44; Lucy Kovalova, 30; Patrick Smith, 38; and Jay Devilliers, 27. All four still live in Wichita.
Not only do Wichita’s pro residents give the city credibility, but the number of courts and level of interest in the city also help its reputation, says Jack Oxler, a Wichita native who works as the director of the Chicken N Pickle in Kansas City and is one of the people credited with expanding the sport in Wichita.
“Per capita, there’s no doubt that Wichita’s the best pickleball city in the world,” he said.
The pickleball push
Pickleball was invented in 1965 in Washington State. The story goes that former Washington state Rep. Joel Pritchard was looking for a way for his family to pass time while vacationing, and he combined some worn-out badminton equipment with his imagination to develop the game, which he gave a silly name he thought people could remember.
The game has been played in Wichita for years, especially in school P.E. classes, but many in the pickleball community credit the senior center crew from the late 1990s and their leader Joyce Ott for jump starting the scene. Ott, who had learned to play the game while visiting her sister in Arkansas, returned home determined to find some pickleball partners and persuaded the center to allow her use of their indoor courts. Eventually, the sport got so popular that it expanded to the senior centers at Linwood Park and at Orchard Park.
Pickleball remained a senior center draw for more than a decade, and by 2012, players were entering and organizing tournaments. That’s also the year that one of the city’s more avid players, Hank Blase, became Wichita’s first USA Pickleball Ambassador and began lobbying the Wichita Park and Recreation department to convert unused tennis courts into pickleball courts.
The city agreed in 2013 to paint pickleball court lines on the tennis courts at Aley Park, but the quest to get dedicated pickleball courts took more convincing. Then, pickleball enthusiast Becky Middleton, who had recently teamed up with Edgemoor Park director Alan Taber to get pickleball courts added to that park’s gym, got a grant from the Lattner Family Foundation that paid to convert two outdoor tennis courts at Edgemoor to six pickleball courts. Those became the city’s first dedicated outdoor pickleball courts. Three years later, the foundation also paid to convert some junior tennis courts at the Riverside Tennis Center.
The pickleball was rolling then, Middleton said, and demand kept increasing. The pickleball community found an ally in Park and Recreation director Troy Houtman, who’d taken over the job in 2014, and in 2018, the city replaced the two dilapidated tennis courts at Seneca Park, which is in the 200 block of Seneca, with six pickleball courts. They’ve been packed since opening day and given new life to the once dying Delano park.
“We have won them over,” Middleton said of the city. “We have the full support of Troy Houtman. He knows what pickleball is about. He understands what pickleball means to this community. Thousands of people are playing this game. It’s crazy.”
Now, the city is working on the Pickleplex, a $3 million facility that it hopes will become a regional destination for pickleball players and tournaments. Houtman said that the facility, which will be at South Lakes Park, just north of Campus High School near 55th South and Meridian, is still in the planning stages, but if all goes well, it should be completed by the end of 2023.
It will feature 20 outdoor pickleball courts, a clubhouse, stadium seating set up around a “championship court,” restrooms and concession stands. If the Pickleplex is as successful as planners think it will be, he said, a second phase could add indoor courts as well.
Houtman, who has picked up the sport himself, said that when he arrived in Wichita, he’d never heard of pickleball. But its dedicated group of local advocates “made sure that I learned.”
He doesn’t want to overbuild the city’s pickleball infrastructure, he said, and he also wants to keep the needs of people who play tennis and other sports in mind. But the demand has been so great, he said, that the city recently contracted with Nashville native and Pickleball expert Noi Sourinthone, who is serving as the city’s first ever pickleball director. Based at the Riverside courts, Sourinthone’s job is to put on pickleball classes and clinics, organize league play and find new ways to grow the Wichita pickleball community.
“One step at a time, we’ll measure the success,” Houtman said. “But if the Pickleplex is as successful as we’re hoping and thinking it’s going to be, I think that’s only going to force us to add more courts.”
Open play
Pickleball is so appealing, its fans say, because it’s easy to learn and doesn’t take long to master. Older people can be competitive, and it’s one of the few sports where age doesn’t necessarily dictate ability.
Its main draw, though, is that it’s a social sport that was designed to build community, and it’s grown so rapidly because it embraces the concept of open play. Those who want to play need only go to an open play session and wait. As soon as a game finishes, they’ll be rotated into a game.
“In pickleball, you just show up and there’s people there,” said Middleton, one of Wichita’s original pickleball enthusiasts. “You don’t have to be there at any specific time. It’s very inviting, and people are welcoming and helpful to those just starting. That’s what’s made pickleball grow.”
Ching Brubaker, a 44-year-old business analyst for a local utility company, is one of Wichita’s most visible non-pro pickleball players. She took up the sport just four years ago, and last month, she and partner Erica Lopez were named US Open Pickleball champions in their age group at a national amateur tournament in Naples, Florida.
Brubaker for years was a Zumba devotee, but now, nearly all her free time is spent on the pickleball court. She plays in three different local leagues.
When she first started playing, Brubaker said, she had a hard time figuring out where to go to join games. So in 2019, she started a Facebook group — Wichita Pickleball — and it now has 2,100 members who use the group to communicate with each other about games, tournaments, league play and more.
Brubaker is one of many local players who say the sport scratches her inner competitive itch.
“You can keep score. And you can get medals. And you can see your progression,” she said. “You start out as a beginner, and then you make progress. If you’re someone like me who wants to be better than you were yesterday, it’s measurable.”
Brubaker said she’s made so many friends through pickleball, and the people she meets are so diverse. They’re all ages and come from all backgrounds. One of her league partners is a 20-year-old guy who manages a local liquor store. She also knows a 94-year-old player.
Sourinthone, Wichita’s new pickleball director, said he was invited to play for the first time four and a half years ago by an 85-year-old customer at the Nashville car lot where he worked. It came up in conversation that Sourinthone had been a tennis table champion as a child, and the customer told him he needed to try pickleball.
The skills translated, Sourinthone said, and he picked the sport up quickly. Today, he’s the part owner of a pickleball company, and earlier this year, he was recruited to move to Wichita to help grow the sport.
Wichita is so far ahead of most cities he’s visited in terms of interest and facilities, he said, and the next step is to get even more organized play established.
Fortunately, he said, he has a large pool to draw from.
“Look out here at the demographics,” he said on a recent night of league play at the Riverside Tennis Center, which now has 13 always busy outdoor courts . “You’re looking at young people, older people, any and every type of jobs from all backgrounds, and everybody’s competing and everybody’s having fun,” he said. “This is the only sport where the diversity of the crowd is like this. You don’t have it in tennis. You don’t have it in basketball. You don’t have it in football. It’s just this sport.”
‘No stopping pickleball’
Pickleball will likely continue to grow in Wichita, many say, and the addition of the Pickleplex will raise the sport’s profile even higher. The city also hopes the facility will draw big tournaments that will translate into big tourism dollars.
The path forward is clear, for the most part, though pickleballers do face some obstacles. A bit of tension exists between pickleball and tennis players, the latter of which fear that the city will lose too many of its tennis courts to pickleball. Many of them also find the plunk plunk plunk of nearby pickleball games a bit distracting.
Also, pickleball fans sometimes struggle to find lighted courts where they can play after dark. Light Up Edgemoor, a fundraising effort led by local pickleballer Gregg Smith and aimed at getting the outdoor courts at Edgemoor Park lighted, has been underway for years and has faced several hurdles, though a resolution may be in sight.
Oxler, who grew up playing tennis with Wichita’s top professional player — Koch attorney Wright — said that the game’s profile has risen just since he started playing eight years ago. Early on, when he’d ask people if they’d heard of pickleball, about 15% of people would say they had and 75% would say they hadn’t. Now, those numbers have flipped.
Pickleball is easier on the body than many sports, including tennis, he said, which makes it perfect for an older crowd. Younger people like that it’s something they can become good at quickly.
“There’s no stopping pickleball, I don’t think, throughout the U.S. or throughout the whole world,” he said. “Cities and towns are seeing the importance of people meeting each other. Pickleball creates community.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2022 at 4:09 AM.
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