Editor,
Re: Pickleball Courts – Crescent Park, Surrey
Crescent Park has been a refuge, a place to regenerate and enjoy nature. We have used it for 35 years. We have walked there, our children grew up playing weekend sports there, we have enjoyed playing on the tennis courts. But mostly we have enjoyed the quiet, the vegetation, the animals, the opportunity to escape urbanization, traffic, noise, development.
Then Surrey decided to build pickleball courts in the park.
The former parking lot had to be rebuilt.
They drove from wherever and filled the parking lot most days. They pounded on their pickle balls and noisily celebrated or despaired. They filled the garbage.
I reprimanded a player who decided to use the area beside a bench and the path instead of walking over to the washroom. No matter where you walk in the park you could hear the pickleballs being smashed and the players exclaiming.
They probably enjoy having a park as background for the courts, but these could easily be built in a parking lot where there is already parking and already lots of noise, and it would make little difference to them.
They certainly were not enjoying the park, just the pickleball courts.
It used to be pleasant to hear the sounds of a baseball game or a cricket match. The sound of those sports are more sporadic and more cheerful, less invasive. Less constant.
Surrey should consider improving the situation by planting shrubs all around the courts to absorb some of the sound. Or sound-absorbing curtaining.
At least then, when walkers are off in the park, the sounds of pickleball may not follow them everywhere.
In future, pickleball courts for the ardent, aggressive players belong in already congested and noisy areas.
These courts do not belong in parks, the few areas which should be for respecting nature and peace.
Linda Payne, Surrey