Pickleballers Clash Over Courts
Pickleball mania has taken over these days. Valleyans have had to travel outside The Valley to play until recently. Strong River Bend has 2 tennis courts at the city park that have not gotten much use in years. Multiple people petitioned the city to convert those tennis courts to pickleball courts, and that project was completed about 5 weeks ago. Pickleball players have been using the courts daily since the conversion.
It’s great that the courts are being used, and it’s great that more people are visiting the park. But, a problem has emerged between the senior citizen players and the teenage players. Most of the senior citizen players have been playing early in the morning to avoid the heat, and teens have been playing later in the evenings. Recently, some of the senior citizen players have started playing in the evenings, and that has taken up a lot of court time for the teens.
There have been reports of some yapping back and forth between the two groups recently, but things got heated this Tuesday night. Police were called after an altercation between an older man and teenage boy. Witnesses said the two were began arguing over the older gentlemen and his playing partner not leaving the court in a timely manner. It soon got heated, and the two were face to face yelling at each other. Luckily, the situation was diffused and no one was arrested.
A senior citizen male witness said, “These young punks have to learn to be patient. They don’t own the place. Us old folks have been paying taxes here for decades, and we should have first dibs on the courts. Kids these days don’t respect their elders. If these youngsters don’t like it, get over it. Plus, all they wanna do is clown around and do videos for social media. We could settle this by playing a match, mano a mano, but they don’t want none.”
A teen witness added, “Look, these old guys should play in the mornings. They get up at like 5:00 am anyway. Us teenagers should get to play in the evenings. The old guy started it by running his mouth; we were ready to play, but we didn’t say anything. Those guys are mean and ruthless. It’s just ridiculous that they think they can play all the time, and they think they don’t have to share the courts.”
Because of the incident, Strong River Bend is now requiring players to reserve court times by the hour. Also, the police will have be patrolling the park more often in the evenings to deter any future incidents. It’s unfortunate the two contingents can’t get along, but hopefully things can get worked out soon.