Plans are moving ahead to open nine city pickleball courts in Foley later this year. The courts will be built on city property north of the Coastal Alabama Farmers and Fishermens Market and east of Koniar Way.

The City Council voted Monday, April 15, to approve funding for road construction providing access to the site. The council also approved going out to bid to build the courts.

David Thompson, Foley executive director for leisure services, said money from impact fees will pay the cost of building the courts. Impact fees are cost charged to new development to pay for increased demand for services created by the construction.

“This is with impact fee dollars. This is why we collect impact fee dollars, to expand our recreational opportunities,” Thompson said. “We are building nine courts but we're also building sidewalks that go with that and a buffer to make sure that it fits in with what we're doing with the Farmers Market.”

He said the project should be ready to go out to bid by summer 2024 and completed later in the year. Thompson said city officials are going over plans for the site in order to see if some costs can be cut.

“We want to look back at what has been proposed and see if we can scale back a little bit. We're gonna look at trying to save some of the costs,” Thompson said He said the road project will be paid with money from the city General Fund. Money from impact fees cannot be used for road construction.

“The road is separate. That’s out of the General Fund,” Thompson said. He said some of the road construction work was done by city Street Department crews, but the final part of the project will be put out to bid. That work includes the parking lot for the courts, paving and water detention work.

According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, pickleball continued to be America’s fastest-growing sport for the third year in a row. With over 36.5 million players and more than 11,000 courts around the country, pickleball overtook tennis in popularity at the end of 2023.

Rick Witsen, a former tennis pro who is co-founder of the National Pickleball League, stated that "It's so much easier to get good at [pickleball] than tennis", said Witsken. He explained that, with tennis, players might need a few lessons before they can successfully hit the ball back and forth three times in a rally.

"But with pickleball, you're doing that in the first five minutes. And the longer the rally, the more the excitement builds, and the more fun it becomes. The entry into being decent at pickleball is so much greater than tennis—that's why the popularity is through the roof," he said.

Who Invented Pickleball And How Was It Named?

Joel Pritchard, a former US congressman from Washington, was on holiday with his friend Bill Bell when the two men devised the game using ping-pong paddles and a wiffle ball on an old badminton court.

Over the course of a few days, the men tweaked the game, eventually lowering the net and making the game more accessible for kids and adults alike. The first change: The ball must bounce once after the serve and after the first return. And the second: a non-volley zone, which Bell said nullified any advantage of taller players.

Pritchard's wife, Joan, said she devised the name "pickleball" due to the game's mismatched look. "I said it reminded me of the Pickle Boat in crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats."