Paddles up: Pickleball courts coming to Yuba City

Members of the Yuba-sutter Pickleball Club and “Mrs. Pickle” at an event in Chico earlier this year.

Michael Barrette was vacationing south of the border last year when he first fell in love with the game.

The encounter was purely happenstance.

“I went to Mexico last year and was looking for Chinese food but somehow ran into pickleball,” Barrette said. “It’s a long story, but when they first told me about it, I didn’t know what it was. I ended up playing it the next four days. I fell in love with it that week so I wanted to bring it back home.”

When Barrette got back into town, he went online to find a local court to play, but there weren’t any. He traveled to places like Roseville, Chico and Folsom to play, but that became tedious, he said. So, he started a local club, gained a following, attracted the attention of Yuba City officials and the rest is history.

Barrette, now president of the Yuba-sutter Pickleball Club, and about 35 of the club’s members have been actively playing on makeshift courts at Home Court Yuba City. But Yuba City Council members approved a $270,000 project at their May 1 meeting to completely restore the aging tennis courts at Sam Brannan Park to include eight pickleball courts and one tennis court.

The club received $25,000 in donations from the Yuba City Rotary Club, the Friends of Yuba City Parks and Recreation Foundation and the Yuba City Unified School District, which will see fifth and sixth graders from Gray Avenue School utilize the courts when they are completed. The rest of the funding will come from the city – a $105,000 community development block grant (pending final approval from the council next month) and approximately $95,000 from the community services budget.

“Receiving those donations was beyond our wildest expectations. We started as just a small club and it has grown incredibly quick,” Barrette said. “It’s a great sport because every age can play it and it’s a great form of exercise. You have so much fun playing that you don’t even really know you are getting great exercise.”

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