It's Pickleball Time

This photo of pickleball on Castro Park tennis courts was taken by Bill Powning on April 17, 2021.

After years of fundraising and persuasion, six permanent pickleball courts are going to replace the two tennis courts in El Cerrito’s Castro Park.

El Cerrito resident Cathy Taruskin led the successful campaign to raise more than $100,000, mostly in small donations. The low bid on the court construction job is within the pickleball group’s budget. The city has agreed to accept the East Bay Pickleball Association’s donation to cover the cost, so that no city funds (beyond normal maintenance costs) will be needed.

The $117,669 contract with First Serve Pro was signed this week.

“It’s going to happen!” Taruskin said.

Hopefully, construction and resurfacing will be done this spring.

Game’s Humble Beginnings

As most readers probably know by now, pickleball is a paddle sport with similarities to tennis and table tennis but played on a court similar to the one used in badminton. Setting up the temporary courts each day can be a pain, Taruskin said.

Taruskin started playing pickleball In 2013 because she had open heart surgery and her doctor told her to find a way to exercise regularly. Before that, she never played a sport.

She started at courts at Ocean View in Albany, where players welcomed her.

“I was really bad at it when I started but the people were so encouraging,” Taruskin recalled. “They needed me because sometimes there were only 7 or 8 people there. A lot of people like me pay it forward because of their gratitude toward the players who helped them get started. We like to have beginners.”

A standard pickleball court is 44 feet long compared to 78 feet for a tennis court, so two, three or even four Pickleball courts can fit in the space of one tennis court.

Twelve years ago there were no pickleball courts in the area. To create temporary pickleball courts players brought portable nets and masking tape, which they used to mark pickleball court lines on tennis courts. After play, they had to pull up the tape and throw it away after only two hours of use. They were just happy to be able to play, Taruskin said.

In 2014, Taruskin asked the city of El Cerrito recreation department to set up a pickleball program similar to the one in Albany. “Chris Jones (El Cerrito Parks and Rec Director) was enthusiastic and pulled in the Senior Center and Janet Bilbas (then the Senior Services Director).

The city started a Thursday pickleball program at Castro tennis courts. There was an instructor who also taught at Albany. Masking tape was used for lines.

Then as cities in the East Bay started more pickleball programs, each city would usually have one day a week for pickleball. Players would migrate from Albany to Richmond to Berkeley to El Cerrito to Oakland to be there on the pickleball day of the week. They all got to know each other.

“It was almost like a pod of whales,” Taruskin said.

And the number of pickleballers grew.

Players set up a pickleball net at the Castro Park tennis courts.

Push for Permanent Courts

In 2018, the city began holding focus group sessions to gather feedback as it developed a new Parks and Recreational Facilities Master Plan. Taruskin monitored that process and sent out an email whenever the consultant was holding meetings and breakout sessions. Pickleball players would always attend, so pickleball was mentioned in every focus group.

Since pickleball was so visible among items requested by citizens, the Parks and Rec department decided to include the addition of pickleball lines at Castro Tennis courts, which was already scheduled for resurfacing in 2018.

Less than two years later, in December 2020, the black pickleball lines at Castro had become so faded that Taruskin asked the city to repaint the pickleball lines a more visible color. The city was willing to do this if the pickleballers could raise the $1,500 needed to pay for it. That’s when Taruskin first went to work on fundraising. She had a mailing list of about 120 people, and within a month people had donated enough to repaint the pickleball lines on the tennis courts.

Then Taruskin learned the group would still have to get approval from the Park and Recreation Commission just to change the color of the existing lines. Instead, she decided to raise the bar and ask the Commission for four permanent pickleball courts on one of the Castro tennis courts, which would have cost about $25,000.

However, a vendor who viewed and measured the Castro courts discovered that their width is narrower than typical tennis courts. Four Pickleball courts would not fit on one tennis court without overlapping onto the other court. So the East Bay Pickleball Association decided to ask the city for the conversion of both Castro tennis courts to make six Pickleball courts.

In March 2021, the Pickleball proposal went to the city’s Park and Recreation Commission and was approved.

One important consideration was data Taruskin had collected on how many players used the pickleball courts. Often they were used by 40 players a day. Members of the El Cerrito Tennis Club appealed the decision, but Park and Rec commissioners did not change their minds. An important aspect of their approval was the assurance that the pickleballers would pay the full cost of the conversion, so there would be no impact on the city budget.

Approval of the proposal triggered a large fundraising effort beginning in March 2021. The mailing list had grown to about 600. In addition to individual donations, funds were raised by holding ladder leagues, tournaments, Round Robins, Lesbian Meetup events, benefit concerts, T-shirt sales, and other special events.  The donation fund was growing steadily.

Pickleballers play at Bushrod Park in Oakland.

Costly Delay

In December 2021, the pickleball courts ran into another obstacle.

The city and the West Contra Costa School District (WCCUSD) had to negotiate.

The city is responsible for all improvements at Castro Park, but the school district owns the land. The contract governing Castro Park (and other assets shared in this way) had not been renegotiated since 1989, Taruskin was told. And the school district had evicted the city from its senior center on school district land behind the library in March 2020, after giving only six months’ notice. No one wanted that kind of thing to happen again.

The pickleball project could not move forward until the agreement was renegotiated.

It took two and one-half years, Taruskin said.

During that time, without having a final target dollar amount to raise, fundraising continued.

By now, Taruskin had become an ambassador for USA Pickleball and Vice-President of The East Bay Pickleball Association, a nonprofit organization that could accept tax-deductible donations.

As time passed and costs rose, Taruskin grew worried and wondered how she would ever return the growing donation pool if her efforts failed.

But finally, in spring of 2024, an agreement between the city and WCCUSD was signed.

Now it was up to the city to assign a project manager and estimator to calculate the expected cost of the project. This occurred in January 2025, by which time the Castro fund had grown to $70,000, which Taruskin hoped would be enough for six permanent courts.

However, the project manager calculated that at least $127,000 was needed.

At that point, Taruskin reached out once more to everyone on her list -- now nearly 1,000 people -- and anyone who had offered to help. She raised another $43,000 in one month.

“All this money poured in,” she said. “It was just so glorious.”

She immediately called Chris Jones at the city to say, “We have enough!”

Soon a request for bids went out from the city. Two bids were received. The city has signed a contract with the lower bid and pickleballers eagerly await the construction schedule.

They have been waiting a long time for this to happen.

New Courts, Please

Said Diana Lin, a pickleball player who likes to play at Castro, “There’s a lot of cracks at Castro and the ball goes wonky. New courts, please.”

Will Tams, a pickleball instructor and coach, praised Taruskin.

“The amount of heart and effort and energy that she has put into fundraising can’t be underscored enough,” he said. “She’s incredible, and we are all indebted to her.”

Pickleball players at the Castro courts in March 2025