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Date: 1/3/2023
HOLYOKE – It was more than a passion for the sport that prompted Holyoke Community College (HCC) President Christina Royal to approach Athletic Director Tom Stewart about bringing pickleball to the college’s David M. Bartley Center for Athletics & Recreation. She saw it as a way for HCC to increase its connection to the community and possibly provide an economic driver for Holyoke, and Western Massachusetts, in the future.
“Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America,” Royal, a former amateur competitive tennis player who took up the sport as a way to ‘burn off some stress” in 2019, told Reminder Publishing. “I thought about how we, as a community college, could bring an affordable [pickleball] option to the area.”
Providing a year-round, climate-controlled venue for the popular court sport dovetailed perfectly with the mission of the college, Royal noted. “When you think about the tenets of access and affordability, which are the soul of the mission of Holyoke Community College” making space for the wildly popular sport seemed a win-win. “As a community college we are about the community and about creating affordable programming [and] we want pickleball to represent those tenants,” she said.
Stewart said when Royal approached him with the idea of providing indoor courts for pickleball at HCC, he was already planning renovations for the Bartley Center’s indoor tennis courts, so the timing was perfect. “We used to have tennis [on these courts] but it’s a dying sport on the collegiate level,” Stewart shared. The renovations, which included a resurfacing of the court area and relining to create regulation pickleball courts in the space, began in April and were completed in July, Stewart said. HCC had seven pickleball courts ready and all equipment in place for an Oct. 1 unveiling to the public.
“We charge $5 to play,” which includes use of pickleball paddles and balls provided by the college, Stewart said. “The courts are open from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to Friday, and we mostly get a retiree crowd, but sometimes we get people before they go to work.
“It’s been a big hit,” Stewart continued, adding he can run seven courts at one time since the renovations. “I field at least five calls a day for [questions about] hours and information, how many courts, what level of play … we go from amateur to pro. We have several people [who play] who also teach. There’s ample parking and we’re just off the highway.”
During Reminder Publishing’s early December visit to the Bartley Center, Stewart noted that the pickleball courts had hosted “39 [players] last Monday, 39 more last Tuesday,” attesting to the popularity of the facility. During the interview, facility employees set up a mobile court to accommodate newly arriving players on a portion of the center’s basketball court.
“This is just what I wanted, we charge $5 per person to play, and we have open court play for anybody, and we have all the equipment, so you don’t need to purchase anything to play,” Royal observed. “You can’t get any more accessible … we have everything [people] need to play.”
Looking forward to future pickleball activity at HCC, Royal said she would “even like to see us tournament, particularly regional tournaments [at the Bartley Center] and at some point, a MJAA [National Junior College Athletic Association] level event when pickleball is accepted as a collegiate sport.
All those things, Royal noted, would increase tourism to Holyoke, and the Western Massachusetts area.