NORTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas — Pickleball is the fastest gowing sport in America, and it's very popular among the residents on North Padre Island.
One local in particular has been using his voice to spread pickleball love around the community.
Padre island resident David Eckenrode started a Facebook page called 'The Islands Pickleball Group,' not thinking it would get too many followers. It blew up immediately and gained over 700 followers.
It's great that many people in the area want to get active and play this sport. But here's the pickle: There was barely anywhere to play pickleball.
Eckenrode wanted to make a change. So he got in contact with Councilmember Dan Suckley and asked him to help get more space for the people to play pickleball.
"We have all these basketball courts, and why not put lines on them so that they can be multi-use courts?," Eckenrode said.
Councilman Suckley and Eckenrode worked together to get lines painted on the local basketball courts so they could also be used for pickleball.
While this is a great start, the players would still like to have courts that are solely for pickleball play. Because of this, Councilman Suckley has started a project to add multiple pickleball courts in Commodores Park on North Padre Island.
”The architect is currently putting some renditions together of how that park could lay out and preliminarily I think there’s a good chance that it’ll have a pretty good number of pickleball courts in there," Councilman Suckley said.
People across all ages, all occupations, and all skill levels get together to play pickleball on the island. Anyone and everyone are welcome to play.
“There’s every kind of person you can imagine that plays," Eckenrode said. "We’ve got people that work offshore that come in and play, we’ve got people that are retired school teachers, every level.”
The North Padre Island Pickleballers are full of love for the sport and support for each other. They all motivate and uplift each other to play their best. They are also excited to continue to welcome new people into the group and to have a new space to play.
“Five courts would serve our community really really well. We could do a lot of things. We could have leagues, we could have social events. It’s so social, it's just unbelievable," Eckenrode said.
Councilman Suckley said that the plans for building the pickleball courts in Commodores Park will be finalized over the next 60 days.
For anyone who wants to join the Islands Pickleball Group on Facebook, click here.
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