Pickleball or tennis? Wichita is asked to choose in dispute over public courts in park

The Wichita Park Board is calling for the city to convert two more tennis courts into pickleball courts in east Wichita, a year after turning down the proposal.

The change of direction sets up a showdown at City Hall that leaves the Wichita City Council to choose between tennis, a popular sport that has been a staple of the city’s parks and recreation programming for decades, and pickleball, an upstart game that’s growing in popularity.

At stake are two tennis courts at Edgemoor Park, one of two city-owned tennis facilities large enough to host tennis tournaments, high school and middle school practices, clinics and youth camps. The Wichita Park Board wants to replace them with six pickleball courts so picklers can have another place to play after dark.

It would give pickleball users 12 courts at Edgemoor, helping boost revenues for private pickleball leagues looking to host smaller-scale regional tournaments while they wait for the city to complete a $3 million, 20-court “pickleplex” slated to open in south Wichita in 2024. Half of those courts will be under lights, Wichita Parks and Recreation Director Troy Houtman said.

But picklers want more courts now. Houtman said he fields calls multiple times a week from frustrated pickleball players who want more places to play.

“They would be the most dedicated, used courts in one city of Wichita location until the pickleball complex is completed,” said Becky Middleton, who has led the charge to add pickleball courts at Edgemoor Park.

It’s cheaper to convert the tennis courts to pickleball courts than install lights over the six existing pickleball courts at Edgemoor.

Middleton’s fundraising campaign, “Light Up Edgemoor,” collected $27,000 in donations but fell well short of the estimated $100,000 needed to install lights over the existing pickleball courts. With matching funds from the Wichita Park Foundation, Middleton said, her group can pay for the city to replace the two tennis courts under lights.

“We are not asking for money but are instead gifting the city six more pickleball courts,” Middleton said. “There is an overabundance of tennis courts compared to pickleball courts.”

“At this point, I think it’s a nationwide problem,” Middleton said. “The tennis community is completely against pickleball, and they feel like they own 100 percent of the concrete that’s painted with their tennis lines. And they don’t.”

Lines or no lines?

The tennis community has pushed back on the pressure campaign by the pickleball community and asked the city to come up with a compromise that wouldn’t take away courts from tennis players.

The group that is most affected by the change is likely to be the Classical School of Wichita, a private K-12 nonprofit school in east Wichita. Its middle school and high school tennis teams practice at Edgemoor for six months out of the year.

Julie Kice, one of the Classical School’s tennis coaches, said she’s not against pickleball. But losing the courts would be devastating to the approximately 65 boys and girls in her tennis program. Her players probably would have to find a new place to practice after 10 years of leasing Edgemoor from the city. One option is McAdams Park, but that would force some of her high school students to battle after-school traffic on Kellogg and I-135. She said the demand for pickleball at Edgemoor has been overblown by city officials and the “Light Up Edgemoor” group.

“I might be the human in Wichita that spends the most time in Edgemoor Park,” Kice said. “It was stated that morning, noon and night there are lines for pickleball. And I just, I want to point out, that I don’t mean this to be combative or anything, but I literally have never seen a line there.”

Kice was addressing a comment by Houtman at an August Park Board meeting, when he said the growing demand justifies replacing tennis courts with pickleball courts.

“As I look at the usage of the tennis courts — when pickleball is played morning, noon and night — these folks (tennis players) really have a very small time frame that they use these tennis courts. So what I’m trying to say is there’s definitely a stronger demand for pickleball than there is for tennis,” Houtman said Aug. 8.

Multiple recent checks of Edgemoor Park — on a mild Friday afternoon in August, at peak playing time on a partly-cloudy, 70-degree holiday weekend morning and mid-morning Tuesday — found most of the pickleball and tennis courts at Edgemoor vacant.

Dividing up Edgemoor courts

The Court War at Edgemoor has resulted in a large show of support from both the tennis and pickleball communities and more than a year of discussion by the Wichita Park Board.

In April 2021, tennis supporters flooded the park board with written comments asking them not to take away two more tennis courts deemed essential for the city’s tennis ecosystem, leading the board to drop the discussion so the city could come up with an alternative plan.

Last month, dozens of picklers showed up at a board meeting and asked for the two courts again. The Park Board voted to support the plan Aug. 22, pending approval by the City Council.

To understand the conflict, you have to understand the layout of Edgemoor’s tennis complex. It features two equal-sized, fenced-in concrete pads with nets and painted courts. The one to the north has lights and four tennis courts; the one to the south has no lights, six pickleball courts and two tennis courts.

Converting two more tennis courts into lighted pickleball courts would leave four tennis courts — two under lights and two without lights.

Nicholas Taylor — a Wichita native, three-time Paralympic doubles gold medalist, 11-time grand-slam champion and director of operations for Wichita State University Tennis — offered a solution that would benefit both tennis players and pickleball players. But it would force the city of Wichita to undo its own decision to put the original pickleball courts in an area without lights.

“If there is still truly a need for more lit pickleball courts, I feel there is a better solution than just losing more tennis courts,” he wrote to the Wichita Park Board last April. “Perhaps the pickleball courts at Edgemoor Park could be moved to the lit bank of courts and the now-pickleball courts could be converted back to tennis courts. This solution would give the ability to light up the pickleball courts but not lose any more tennis courts.”

The Park Board did not consider that option last month and instead opted to recommend replacing the two tennis courts. The Wichita City Council will ultimately decide whether to accept the board’s recommendation or go with an alternative plan.

This story was originally published September 7, 2022 at 4:37 AM.