With rackets ready and spirits high, the Port Townsend Pickleball Club held a Spring Gala event to help raise funds for new pickleball courts at Mountain View Commons on Blaine Street.

Attendees met at Mountain View, with around 30 club members or interested parties converging in one of the facility’s meeting rooms to hear more about the club’s capital campaign to raise around $35,000 for three new pickleball courts on a concrete lot near Mountain View’s dog park.

After getting the OK from the city of Port Townsend to fundraise for the new courts March 21, the club has since been busy trying to build up funds for the project.

Before the Spring Gala fundraiser, the PT Pickleball Club had already reached $15,000 in pledges from donors and they hope to get even closer to their $35,000 goal.

At the gala, multiple members of the club spoke to supporters about the fundraiser and future plans.

“I want to thank everybody in charge of this function,” said Lynn Pierle, PT Pickleball Club’s president.

Pierle discussed results from the agreement with the city, saying: “We didn’t get everything we wanted. We got three courts instead of nine, but you can’t always get what you want.”

“If we can make this an attractive court, [the city of Port Townsend] is going to be more willing to help with future courts,” Pierle said. “We will be constantly lobbying to get more pickleball courts.”

The capital campaign was born from a need for more pickleball courts in Port Townsend and with the potential new courts at Mountain View Commons, the club wants to build them up with an eye on quality and longevity.

“We went to the city to ask them about resurfacing the Mountain View concrete to put in a nice facility there,” said Mary Critchlow, one of the club’s founding members. “We have all compromised to a point now where the city is allowing us to put in three courts there. It’s going to be a nice surface and hopefully we’ll be able to expand from there for future courts right at the Mountain View Commons.”

Critchlow is confident the pickleball club will reach its ambitious goal of $35,000 in donations.

“In my opinion, just having worked with this club for a long time, I don’t think it’s going to take too much. We’ll always encourage people to pledge, but I think it’s going to go pretty quickly,” she said. “I think the club will research [resurfacing the courts] pretty thoroughly to make sure we get the right contractor who does the right kind of job for the money we put into it.”

Playing pickleball for around eight years, before the sport had a sensational swell in interest in recent times, Critchlow believes the versatility, media coverage, fun level, and evolving nature of the sport has caused the wave of interest in the sport, founded decades ago on Bainbridge Island.

“In the last two years, it’s taken off exponentially,” Critchlow said of pickleball.

“It’s becoming a faster and faster game with younger and younger people, so it’s becoming a sport that people like to spectate. I think that’s really helped.”

The PT Pickleball Club is still calculating new pledge funds from the Spring Gala and others, but the organization is well on its way to three new pickleball courts in the near future at Mountain View Commons.

To donate  to the  PT Pickleball Club or learn more, visit www.ptpickleball.com.