Pickleball courts created at Elkins City Park
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ELKINS -- A local man's desire to have more places to play America's fastest-growing sport, pickleball, has led to the construction of three new courts at the Elkins City Park.
Tim Gibson grew up playing a variety of sports and competed in tennis while attending Davis & Elkins College. But after reaching a certain age and enduring several surgeries, Gibson knew he had to find a different sport that would allow him to get the exercise he needed but cause less wear-and-tear on his body.
"All the other sports I was playing I'd walk away and need several days to recover," Gibson told The Inter-Mountain. "Like with tennis, my elbow and shoulder would bother me for days and my knees and ankles would be beaten to death.
"With pickleball, I can go out and play three or four hours and the next day I can play again if I want to. It's just not beating up my body like all the other sports I've ever played. I think that's part of the reason I've kind of fallen in love with it."
The sport of pickleball reached new heights during the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued to grow. Gibson was one of the many new pickleball enthusiasts who turned on to the sport during the height of COVID.
"It was kind of coming back around here a little bit, but during COVID you were only allowed to have two or four people in the gym at a time, so it became something people could do to get some exercise," Gibson said. "It wasn't as serious before the pandemic, but it is growing more and more each day now."
With only a few pickleball courts in Elkins, Gibson and a group of friends often traveled to Bridgeport to play the sport. He said with each trip there, his love and knowledge of the game continued to grow.
"Pickleball is an addiction. I had a friend here that asked me for a long time to play and I kept saying no because I thought it was stupid," he said.
"I had played a little in high school and college, but I really didn't know what I was doing. And then I learned to really play when we were playing in Bridgeport at the indoor facility there. I started to learn the actual strategies and the game as it really exists. Once I did that, I learned how great of a sport it is."
With Elkins limited to one full-sized pickleball court, and two smaller courts at the YMCA and another court in the gymnasium at Jennings Randolph Elementary, Gibson took it upon himself to find a place to build more courts in town.
"I started pestering the Elkins Parks and Recreation and everyone in town about getting courts at the City Park," Gibson said. "I think my excitement, my enthusiasm and my ability to explain how inclusive the sport is, made them want to get involved."
Gibson's pitch to the EPRC worked and the organization agreed to pay for the surfacing of new courts in the City Park.
"I think because a handful of the board members with the Parks and Recreation had been exposed to pickleball, they were already excited about it when I came to them," Gibson said. "It just fell in place and I volunteered to do the project management myself, because I know the guys with the EPRC have enough to do."
The EPRC agreed to allow Gibson to head the project and he wasted little time getting to work. One of the first things he did was call Otis Cutshaw, who was a former tennis teammate of his at D&E. Gibson knew that Cutshaw had been building pickleball courts and doing resurfacing projects in Florida, where he now resides.
"He's an old friend and he has family still here in the area," Gibson said. "So when he came to work on the courts, it was also a time for him to go visit his relatives. It was good to bring someone back who actually cares about the community and was interested in doing that."
Cutshaw and his son Mason began working on the courts in early September. They recently finished up the project, which created three brand-new pickleball courts to play on at the City Park.
"The project took significantly longer than expected, because it's just like anything in Elkins, you have those days where you have all four seasons in one day," Gibson said. "And that's what he went through the whole time he was here.
"So he did as much as he could the first four days he was here during Labor Day weekend, and he finished them up a couple weeks ago when we had some good weather."
Temporary fencing has recently been installed around the three new courts. Gibson said the temporary border may end up being permanent because of the look and feel it brings to the area. If not, he said the Elkins Pickleball Club will take care of financing the fencing.
"We've already started playing and we are starting to drag more people in each day," Gibson said. "I've already seen many people that I have never met out there playing on the courts before, which was really cool to see."
Gibson, who played tennis for four years at D&E and was part of the coaching staff there for 10 more, heads up the Randolph County Pickleball Club, and is the USA Pickleball Ambassador to the area.
"Pickleball translates very nicely from tennis," said Gibson. "From strategy to fundamentals, there's a lot of similarities. So it's made it easy for me to teach other people how to play.
"I'm not a great pickleball player, but I'm a solid pickleball player and most of that is because of my tennis background. Anyone who is athletic and coordinated at all will pick it up really quick. People who are less athletic or less coordinated will still pick it up and they will also eventually be very good."
For more information on playing pickleball in the area, visit the Elkins/Randolph County Pickleball Facebook page.