This week, The Conversation has been sharing stories about pickleball around the state — the good, the bad, and the noisy.
Honolulu Parks and Recreation Department head Laura Thielen talked Tuesday about a "lack of aloha" between pickleball and tennis players and a need for compromise.
At a town hall meeting with Mayor Rick Blangiardi last year, a young tennis player asked if her tennis courts were being converted to pickleball courts.
"I take tennis classes at the park. My coach told us that we may have to stop our classes soon because our courts will be made into pickleball courts. When I first heard this, it made me really sad, I even cried," the third grader from Wilson Elementary said.
The Conversation spoke with Ron Romano, the executive director of the U.S. Tennis Association's Hawaii Pacific Section, about the tension and different cultures between tennis and pickleball players.
"We support pickleball. The health benefits are very similar. It's easy to play. It's social, it's fun, you get a lot of exercise," he said. "Our biggest and only concern is we don't want to lose tennis courts because we're growing, and we're maxed out."
"With the growth of pickleball, for some reason, I think the city felt that they needed to quickly accommodate all the pickleball players, but at the expense, not only of tennis, but taking tennis courts, taking basketball courts, taking volleyball courts away," Romano said.
He said the USTA is a big supporter of standalone pickleball courts, adding that blended courts with multiple lines for various sports are only a short-term solution.
Romano said about 8% of Hawaiʻi's population plays tennis.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 27, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
