TEMPLE TERRACE — Pickleball players in Temple Terrace are getting a few new courts to play on.

While the courts aren’t dedicated pickleball courts, the city has passed a resolution to spend $71,000 to resurface the public tennis courts at 10901 Richlyne St.

All six of the complex’s tennis courts will be resurfaced for tennis, and three of the courts will also have pickleball lines.

The pickleball striping will run perpendicular to the tennis lines, creating six total pickleball configurations to be used with portable nets.

That should relieve some of the local demand for places to play pickleball, as the city has received numerous requests — a “constant demand,” according to Karl Langefeld, the city’s leisure director — for more facilities.

“Pickleball is a rapidly growing sport throughout the country, and there has been increasing demand, not just here but throughout the region,” he said.

The resurfacing of the courts is expected to begin sometime later this month or in May, and will take a few weeks to complete.

That is great news for the Temple Terrace Pickleball Club, which has more trouble than usual finding courts in the summer, when its primary location at the Temple Terrace Family Recreation Center becomes more crowded with children’s activities requiring the courts.

“This is great news,” said Tom Wagner, a co-chairperson of the club, which has roughly 120 members. “Finding courts to play on can be difficult.”

Pickleball continues to be America’s hottest game, and its popularity among players is outstripping places to actually play the game.

A 2023 Sports & Fitness Industry Association report said that the game is the country’s fastest-growing for the third straight year, and roughly 36.5 million people played the game at least once in the past year.

And if you think it’s a game for the old folks who had to trade in their tennis racquets for pickleball paddles, you’d be wrong — the largest age bracket playing the game currently is ages 18-34, and trending younger, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association report.

While Hillsborough County is pushing construction of new places to play pickleball, some areas are lagging.

In Temple Terrace and New Tampa, courts can be hard to come by. Most Temple Terrace residents play at the Family Recreation Center, which doesn’t have any dedicated courts but provides courts on already existing basketball courts inside (four of them) and outside (two).

In New Tampa, some of the clubs, like Tampa Palms and Hunter’s Green, have been toying with adding courts.

But all those places would require paid memberships to use the facilities.

In 2017, there were plans to replace the basketball courts at Riverhills Park with eight pickleball courts, effectively creating a high-end facility for locals. But that fell apart years later when it was determined that the concrete was too damaged and not worth resurfacing, so the plans were scrapped.

The public tennis courts at Richlyne Street are the home courts for the King High tennis teams. But like those courts at Riverhills Park, they could be nearing their end of life as well.

According to Langefeld, this will likely be the last time they are resurfaced, and he hopes that leads to a complete refurbishing of the facility in six to seven years.

“The long-range plan is to redo that complex so there are dedicated tennis and pickleball courts,” he said.

Until then, a new six-pack of places to play will have to hold local pickleball loyalists over.

For more information on how to join the Temple Terrace Pickleball Club, visit tinyurl.com/TTpickle.

John C. Cotey is the managing editor of the Tampa Beacon. He can be reached at jcotey@tampabeacon.com