Huether Family Match Pointe, Active Generations to add pickleball courts amid sport growth

Andy Dedula was 49 years old when he first started playing pickleball. He saw someone else playing and was intrigued by the sport, so he bought a cheap net and started playing.

Dedula saw there was going to be a tournament at the Sanford Pentagon a few weeks later and decided to participate, thinking he could beat up on all the older people that played.

That’s not exactly what happened.

“It was the old people that beat up on us,” Dedula said. “That’s when I realized that I can play until I get older. So I’ve been playing three, four or five days a week ever since.”

Now, three years later, he’s part of the Sioux Falls Pickleball Club. His wife is a board member and in her bio, she wrote “I realized if I ever wanted to see (Andy) again that I better learn the game.” The couple even put a court in their backyard and have members of the club over to play.

The club itself has seen tremendous growth over those three years. When Dedula joined, he estimates the club had around 300 members. Now, they have around 750.

"It's such a social thing,” Dedula said. “People are putting it out there … if it wasn't for the club, it wouldn't grow as fast, just because it's a fun environment to be around. You go play and you can go hang out afterward, and you help other people get better.”

Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America. There are an estimated 36.5 million pickleball players in the US, making it one of the largest sports in America by participation. There are 10,320 pickleball facilities nationally according to Pickleheads, a court data provider.

The exercise the sport offers paired with low impact on the players' joints makes pickleball easy for anyone to pick up.

Active Generations holds beginner pickleball sessions on Wednesdays for new and casual players. They have two courts that allow four people to play at a time. Chairs line the baseline where those waiting for their turn to play have the chance to converse with each other.

The participants go for the exercise but stay for the relationships they’ve made.

Most local players have been playing for 1-3 years but all of them said they’ve seen more and more people come to play at the beginner sessions. When I went there weren’t enough chairs for everyone to sit on while they waited between games, so people stood along the edges, but they were unbothered by having to stand and wait.

Local facilities like Active Generations and Huether Family Match Pointe are taking note of the growing popularity of pickleball in Sioux Falls. Mark Vellek, the executive director of Huether Family Match Pointe, and Gerald Beninga, president and CEO of Active Generations, are in the midst of expansion projects that will add more pickleball courts to their facilities.

“It certainly hasn’t been an issue of demand,” Vellek said. “We know the demand is there, but we only have so much space, we were already pretty much maxed out with all of our tennis programming. With this expansion space, adding four tennis courts and four pickleball courts, that will open the door for a lot more pickable opportunities at Match Pointe.”

Vellek said the facility's planned expansion will begin at the start of December. Beninga said there will be pickleball courts at the new Active Generations location opening late this summer.

According to Pickleheads, there are 50 pickleball courts in South Dakota, that's the third-fewest in the United States.

Dedula said facilities like Huether Family Match Pointe adding pickleball courts is huge for the sport in Sioux Falls.

“There's a lot of churches (that have courts), a couple of schools,” Dedula said. “Match Pointe is a good place where you can get high-quality play. It's an indoor facility that if you're really going to get good, you need to play on a surface, that's the right surface for pickleball.”

Jonathan Fernandez covers high school and college sports for the Argus Leader. Contact him at jfernandez@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JFERN31

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Local facilities adding pickleball courts amid sport growth