City of Perryville to add outdoor Pickleball courts

The City of Perryville is expanding its reach into one of the growing sports in the country.
Pickleball is growing popular, not only around the nation, but also Perry County.
The city is devising a plan to add multiple outdoor Pickleball courts around the Perry Park Center in the coming weeks.
“We are looking at three different courts to be added,” Perryville City Administrator Brent Buerck said.
More than 36.5 million people played pickleball from August 2021 to August 2022, according to a new report by the Association of Pickleball Professionals released exclusively to CNBC. Earlier data pinned the participation rate of the sport at 5 million players in 2021.
The latest numbers unveiled in the 2023 APP Pickleball Participation report, via a study conducted by YouGov, shows that 14% of Americans played pickleball at least once in that 12-month period. And over 8.5 million people played pickleball eight times or more. Pickleball is a paddle sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton, and ping-pong using a paddle and plastic ball with holes. It is a game that is appropriate for players of all ages and skill levels. Rules for pickleball are simple, making it a great introductory sport. It can also be quite the challenging, fast-paced, and competitive game when people become more experienced at playing. Pickleball rules are so similar to ping-pong, it can be easy for practically anyone to learn how to play the game. Whether you’re a beginner who just wants to learn a new sport for fun.
Even in Perryville, Pickleball has seen an explosion in players, especially in the last few years in the annual Senior Games.

So much so, that the Games have needed to create a whole separate day for the single competition.
The event had 12 mixed double teams, nine women’s teams and five men’s teams last August.
The sport isn’t only popular during the senior games, however, but also throughout the week at the Perry Park Center.
“We have a group at the Park Center,” Steve Hotop said at a recent Board of Aldermen meeting. “When we first started we struggled to even get four players, and now we have two sometimes three games going with a few people sitting and waiting their turn. I’m think an outdoor court would be helpful. We even have our own court at my house.”
The city will convert the multipurpose court into three pickleball courts.
“The multipurpose court in the park has a bathroom next door, a walking trail right in front of it,” Buerck said. “The space that is inside the fence plays well for three courts. The orientation that was asked for is actually present there.”
There was some changing of the budget to accommendate the courts.
“We’ve removed the striping of the tennis ball courts and the potential of the playground on School Street as was directed,” Buerck said. “We combined that with a basketball court outside. We think we can get this done pretty quickly.”