History of Pickleball in SW Florida Article II Nov 9 2006

To read Article I click on blog dated Nov 1, 2006 

I approached the new Wa-Ka-Hatchee Recreation Center in December of 2004 located at the Lexington Middle School off Summerlin and was able to convince them that the sport could be played inside a gym. Thanks to there efforts, in Jan of 2005 we played our first indoor Pickleball. I personally found playing inside was more enjoyable.

 We started playing every Saturday morning at 9AM and experienced a good turn out until the summer season came and we lost a lot of player who were Snowbirds. WE also found a lot of our players had other sports they enjoyed plus everyone takes there vacation to get out of Florida. We now are playing every Friday morning from 9AM to12. As I write play is small but should pick up. We play on three taped courts.

In Jan of 2005, Collier County, just south of Lee County, ran the first Senior Pickleball Games on two courts taped on old basketball courts and had about 20 players show up, very few who new how to play the game. In Jan/Feb of 2006 yours truly ran the first Lee County Senior Pickleball Games and 25 players showed up. The games were run indoors and all players seemed to enjoy the play.  Both Counties are planning to include Pickleball in their 2007 Sr Games.

I believe in Jan of 2005, the State of Florida sent out bids to all counties in Florida who might be interested in hosting the State Championship Senior games, held early in December, for the next 3 years. Namely 2006, 2007 and 2008. The 2005 State Games were scheduled to be held in The Villages where they had been very successfully held for three years. Lee County in June of 2006 won the contract award and as I write this blog today, the 2006 Florida State Championship Games are only one month away and start Dec 3 through Dec 10^th.

In preparation for these games, Pickleball competitions will be played on 24 tennis courts, 8 in each of three different locations. Each court which will be taped with temporary Pickleball lines. The reason for this temporary arrangement is because there are no county public pickleball courts available in all of SW Florida except for the indoor courts at Wa-Ka Hatchee.

Lee County had only 6 months to get ready for the games and is doing a super job considering the number of sports being offered. However; in Pickleball, the biggest sport, they decided to solve the lack of public pickleball courts in the area by temporally taping tennis courts for the three days of competition in December for first year (2006) of the Sr Games contract to host the event..

Since there are no public courts in Lee County there will be  very few players from Ft Myers who can enter the State Championship Games because with no permanent courts in Lee County there is no place to learn or play the sport. Efforts to get at least a few tennis courts painted fell on deaf eras. It costs so little to permanently paint the lines on a tennis court at least 10 existing Lee County tennis courts should have been painted in the fall of 2006 so clinics could have been run.

The senior games (pickleball) will come off well as players from the Villages and surrounding counties compete. A after the games are finished the tape on the courts will be taken up and Lee County will still have no Pickleball courts to play the game on. Hopefully the county will see from this years State Games the need to have permanent pickleball courts available for public use.

 Check back with me from time to time to get an update on the results of the State Championship PICKLEBALL GAMES and it's effect on pickleball in SW Florida in the future.