Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the country. Its popularity in Hawaiʻi is evident just about everywhere. Last July, Honolulu officials opened the state's first dedicated pickleball complex at Ke’ehi Lagoon Park.
This week, The Conversation is looking at some of the community impacts of pickleball — for better or worse. It all started with a voicemail from listener Bernadette Sabath, who said the Hilo pickleball community has been underserved.
"I wondered if I could pitch an idea of doing coverage of pickleball on the Big Island. We are struggling on the Hilo side. We need more courts," she told HPR.
On Oʻahu, the city has made progress to increase the available courts. A section of its website is dedicated to helping the public find one of 197 courts at 95 parks.
But according to Sabath, Hawaiʻi Island resources are far more limited. Hawaiʻi County Parks and Recreation Director Maurice Messina said pickleball hit his department "like a ton of bricks."
He said interest in pickleball continues to grow, fueled in part by recent transplants to the island who were accustomed to standalone pickleball facilities.
"One of the issues that we're dealing with in our department is we have decades of deferred maintenance," he said. "What that did is it really hamstrung us on what we could and couldn't do at our facilities. For instance, you know, how do we build a new pickleball court when we know that we have bathrooms that are shut down?"
Mayor Mitch Roth recently allotted $100,000 to create new standalone pickleball courts and resurface underutilized facilities.
"We are happy to share that every time we build or refurbish facilities, pickleball lines are and will be added so that our residents who are picking up the nation's fastest-growing sport have a place to play," Roth said during his State of the County address last week.
Messina said the county has identified about 150 courts that could be used for pickleball.
He said the department also plans to launch in April an online directory of recreational facilities — which will eventually include pickleball information.
"We know that there is a lack of resources for the pickleball community, so I would just ask anybody that believes that the county is not supporting this effort to have a little bit more patience with us, as we identify the funding that is necessary," Messina told HPR.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 25, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Sophia McCullough adapted this story for the web.
