Holding court in Sequim: Sequim Picklers celebrate park facility’s opening

Candace Pratt said she wasn’t particularly impressed with pickleball when she first heard of a growing contingent of community advocates for the sport in 2014, when she was mayor for the City of Sequim.

“With your enthusiasm,” Pratt admitted last week to a vociferous group of pickleball players, “I woke up.

Here we are, four years later, to celebrate the dream accomplished.”

Pratt and other city officials joined a throng of Sequim Picklers and others for a ribbon-cutting of eight new pickleball courts at Carrie Blake Community Park on July 25, putting an official stamp on the facility that opened in earnest on June 28.

Hosted by the pickleball group, City of Sequim and Sequim-Dungeness Chamber of Commerce, the celebration gave Picklers a chance to give thanks to a number of folks within and outside the group who made the court construction possible.

“Without this city’s support, these courts would never have happened,” Sequim Picklers vice president Charlie Pugh said.

Pugh singled out a number of city officials, from Pratt and other city council members to former Assistant City Manager Joe Irvin for connecting with the council about the group’s plans, to engineers Matt Klontz and Dave Nakagawara for helping get the court entrance compliant with the American Disabilities Act.

With a crowd of more than 50 looking on, Pugh enthused, “The City of Sequim is now proud owner of the pickleball gem of the Olympic Peninsula.”

Dave Shreffler, president of Sequim Family Advocates, helped the Sequim Picklers raise funds through his group’s nonprofit status. He said that while his “The community that plays together, stays together” mantra in putting together the Albert Haller Playfields may have seemed cliche, it holds true in this project as well.

The group revealed that they have named Court 4 after architect Christiane Johnson’s architecture company, Kata Tjuta, after Johnson donated her work to draw schematics for the courts.

The event also gave pickleball players a chance to hear from, meet and get autographs from Barney McCallum, and Bainbridge Island resident who is one of the originators of the sport.

McCallum said he, Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell developed the game in the mid-1960s, improvising a game with a lowered badminton net, a whiffle ball and fabricated paddles.

“Joel Pritchard and I … had no idea what was going to happen,” McCallum said.

They created the paddle, created rules, drew up the size of the court and eventually refined rules of the game with the purpose that families and participants of all ages can play together.

“I didn’t invent anything; we stole rules (from other sports),” McCallum said. “There were terrible arguments about the rules.”

Using a band saw at night to hand-make pickleball paddles, he noted, “The shape of them has never changed.”

McCallum formed Pickleball Inc. in 1972 and saw the sport of pickleball — named after Pritchard’s dog, McCallum said, though Pritchard’s wife Joan said the name came from the term “pickle boat,” referring to the last boat to return with its catch — began to grow and grow.

Pritchard, incidentally, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and eventually went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Washington state.

Now 92 years old, McCallum said he finally gave up the sport at age 85.

See photos from the event at www.sequimgazette.com.

For more about the Sequim Picklers, see www.sequimpicklers.net.

Pickleball players enjoy a day of play following a Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting at the courts, located at Carrie Blake Community Park. Sequim Gazette photos by Michael Dashiell