The tennis courts at Beal Park have been unusable for years due to weathering, but Maryville Parks and Recreation has a way to get out of this pickle — pickleball courts.
Maryville Parks and Recreation’s master plan includes remodeling the Beal Park tennis courts. The remodeling will replace six tennis courts and the basketball hoop with nine pickleball courts, put in by Tarkett Sports Construction. This project will total about $500,000.
MPR Director Maggie Rockwood said construction should be completed before the school year begins.
“We are hoping for construction to start by the end of this month,” Rockwood said. “We are hoping for substantial completion by the summer, hoping for complete construction by middle to end of the summer.”
Pickleball is a paddle sport — blending tennis, badminton and table tennis — that can be played both indoors and outdoors, with a net slightly lower than a badminton net, according to USA Pickleball. The sport can be played by all ages and offers a cardio workout, as well as training coordination, reflexes and social connection.
The Maryville Community Center and the tennis courts at Northwest are some of the few places residents can play pickleball, but none are present in an outdoor public park. Rockwood said the Maryville Community Center has pickleball participation from Monday to Sunday, but these courts are only indoors.
ANNA CASE | Designer
“We’ve just had such a big interest in pickleball here lately,” Rockwood said. “Anyone can play pickleball, from little kids to older adults, so it’s just a sport that everyone can get into and can bring people together. With as many people we have playing here already and wanting more and more space all the time, it was just something we decided we really needed to get done.”
Rockwood said there is more work to be done at Beal Park, but no plans have been made. She said one goal for Beal Park is to make it comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines and to renovate the bathrooms in the park. Rockwood said a nine-court pickleball complex is a big accomplishment for a town the size of Maryville, with the nearest nine-court outdoor complex being in Kansas City, Missouri.
Rockwood said she has seen a lot of excitement around the Maryville community regarding the pickleball courts. She said the courts will be open the same time as the park: from sunrise to sundown, with that changing depending on the season. She said with the new courts, MPR will hopefully host their own pickleball tournaments.
“We definitely have talked about whenever we get this complex done and ready, doing a kickoff event, maybe hosting some tournaments out there,” Rockwood said. “We’ll probably start running a couple of our own tournaments and stuff like that, but nothing planned specifically.”
This story is brought to KXCV-KRNW by The Northwest Missourian, the campus newspaper of Northwest Missouri State University.