Joining the revolution Two new indoor venues aim to serve the pickleball boom By: Mike Sawatzky Posted: 1:42 PM CST Friday, Feb. 9, 2024 Last Modified: 9:45 AM CST Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024 Updates

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The pickleball revolution is gathering steam in Manitoba.

Two new dedicated indoor venues — one in Winnipeg and another near Selkirk — have created new spaces for pickleball players of all ages to hone their games.

The growth of the sport locally has overwhelmed the ability of facilities suitable for playing the game indoors during the winter months to keep up with the demand.

That demand gave Ryan Giesbrecht and Justin Friesen, co-owners of Prairie Badminton in Winnipeg, an idea to expand their business.

Now, after a year of planning and more than $200,000 of investment, the duo has added two pickleball courts to their successful nine-court badminton operation located in Transcona.

The new courts are tentatively opening for business on Sunday.

“Five years ago, it wasn’t on my radar and I was not anticipating pickleball would be in my future,” says Giesbrecht, a professional badminton coach who has partnered with Friesen at Prairie Badminton since the summer of 2019.

“But I’ve played it since then and it’s grown in popularity immensely. And I liked the sport. I think it’s a really good sport… very accessible. It gets a ton of people active and it’s fun.”

Friesen and Giesbrecht are happy to put a dent into the overflow demand. Their courts, dubbed Pickle Haüs, will be open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays.

“It’s only two courts but the fact that we’re opening that many hours vastly increases the amount of courts per hour that are available in Winnipeg,” says Friesen.

In Winnipeg, adapted indoor pickleball courts are currently available for booking at the Dakota Fieldhouse and a number of other gyms.

The city also has three locations with dedicated outdoor pickleball courts: three at La Fleche Park, eight at Winnipeg West and four more courts at Jill Officer Park. Tennis courts, which are often adapted for use by pickleball players, do not have regulation pickleball lines or nets.

Situated six kilometres southwest of Selkirk on Hwy. 9, there’s another unique twist to the pickleball craze.

Members at the Selkirk Community Church have allocated approximately 35 hours per week on four courts in a spacious gymnasium for pickleball use and more recently have converted a mezzanine area once used for storage into a dedicated pickleball court.

The church, built in 2020 on 30 acres of land, has plenty of space for expansion to meet any future increases in the demand for court time.

“In the last year, particularly, there’s been a huge increase,” says Lisa Warkentine, the church’s facility co-ordinator. “We were kind of going up slowly and then all of a sudden this last year, I don’t know what happened. Lots of new people that had never played pickleball before were coming, and so it’s literally doubled.

“This should be our really dead time, we should have been able to compress everything because all the snowbirds have gone south, right? For some reason, we just kept all our groups going. It’s going to go crazy in May when the snowbirds come back.”

Lisa’s husband, Gary Warkentine, admits he expected volleyball and basketball rentals would absorb most of the available gym time. Fortunately, they heeded advice during construction to paint pickleball lines on the gym floor — just in case.

“What makes us unique here is that we need the pickleball community in order to pay our mortgage,” he says. “It’s not the other way around. They are not an inconvenience to us. We need them.”

Pickleballers can book 2 1/2 hours of court for $4 a person, which is a bargain even when compared with community-centre rates in Winnipeg. Rec groups pay $3.50 per session on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Private rentals of the entire gym are available for $35 per hour.

“The reason we charge something is because when we started this building, we were a small congregation — 50 people — and we built this huge thing,” says Lisa. “There’s absolutely no way that we could pay for it.

“So, we took this huge leap of faith and we said the only way this can possibly work is if we partner with our community. We’re not going to be a business and charge them retail rates like in the city.”

She has taken up the game herself but was originally puzzled by the allure of the game.

“It gets to your physical activity, which you need,” says Lisa. “But it also gives you a social setting, so you develop friendships and that is important, too. But also when you’re playing pickleball for that two hours, you don’t think about any of your stresses. You have just a little break.”

At Pickle Haüs in Transcona, the growth of the marketplace is a younger demographic even though pickleball has been driven mostly by the demands of seniors since the game was invented.

“People that will be here a lot are going to be people around our age,” says Friesen, 36. “In the evenings and weekends, it’s going to be a lot of the younger people — 30- to 50-year-olds — that still have jobs and haven’t been able to even pick up the sport because it’s just inaccessible.

“So, that’s gonna grow but initially, it’s going to start with the people that are already out there and just want to play with their friends.”

Costs at Pickle Haüs include a $30 annual membership fee. Rates for up to six people using a court are $30 per hour on evenings and weekends. The day rate during the week is $25 per hour.

Friesen and Giesbrecht won’t discount the possibility expanding their indoor pickleball operation at some point while the Selkirk Community Church organizers — Lisa and Gary Warkentines and their colleague, Vern Irwin — have already done a feasibility study of building indoor and outdoor courts.

“We’ve costed that but with the money you spend for an outdoor, we’re better off to put it indoors, because we’re seasonal here,” says Irwin. “We’re not Florida. It’s still wet — there’s rain and wind.”

The Selkirk facility has drawn players from as far away as Saskatoon and it routinely attracts enthusiasts from the Morden area.

“We don’t really know what the limits are, absolutely,” says Gary. “We don’t really know what the unmet demand is. So, for all these facilities that are talking about expanding, there’s probably room for all of them.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca