Ideas

Pickleball

Pickelball is uniquely a “walk on” sport. Players can show up and rotate into play—if there is an established location where players know to show up (eg, AO Park). During inclement weather (eg, winter, rain), Columbia has no such location. South side is underserved no matter the weather. The Fieldhouse would serve both as an inclement weather and south side resource.

PickleBall is the fastest growing sport in the nation, and played by people of all ages. Given the emphasis on being active for good health, please provide more options for people to play this sport!

Our facility is similar to the Sports Pavilion in Lawrence but they designed theirs so that 2 courts sit sideways in each bay instead of just 1 court. Make it slightly bigger than phase 1 to be more efficient and maximize space. By adding a little onto the length, you could make each of the 4 bays of courts longer in order to add 2 volleyball courts (and basketball) that sit sideways and would be regulation size for tournaments. One of the goals is to host large tournaments. In order to do this, you will need more courts in order to compete with St. Louis, Springfield, Kansas City, and Lawrence. In the last few years, volleyball has grown to become more popular than basketball and is about to overtake track and field as the most popular sport amongst high schools girls. https://www.statista.com/statistics/197289/female-participation-in-us-high-school-athletic-programs-2010/#:~:text=Track%20and%20field%20has%20been,engaged%20in%20this%20sporting%20activity. We have 100s (probably over 1,000 now) of girls in the Mid Missouri region that are playing club volleyball and have to travel to St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Lawrence, Topeka, Omaha, in order to compete in regional tournaments because we don't have adequate volleyball facilities in Columbia to host. We are losing the opportunity for 1,000s of visitors each weekend because of our lack of volleyball tournaments. This equals tons of lost revenue in sales tax. We have been trying to expand opportunities for volleyball but can't because of a lack of availability of volleyball courts. We have multiple clubs that operate out of Columbia and have to rent courts in other cities like Jefferson City and Fulton because we don't have enough courts to accommodate all the practices. By making it bigger, it would make better use of the space and be cheaper in the long run. See Lawrence Kansas Sports Pavilion for an example. https://assets.lawrenceks.org/documents/rcp/2013.11.05_Rec_Center_Images.pdf