Reedley opens first pickleball courts at Sports Park

The first two pickleball courts at Reedley Sports Park opened to players on June 24, and the clearest sign of what they meant came when the ribbon came down and the courts filled with pickup games. City officials and neighbors gathered around a project that had lived as an idea for years, then finally turned into a place where Reedley players could actually hit a ball.

Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba, Mayor Matthew Tuttle and Sierra Kings Health Care District CEO Chinayera Black Hardaman all took part in the opening, alongside residents who had been waiting to see the park move from planning to play. After the remarks, Sierra Kings Health Care District raffled off pickleball gear, and the scene shifted quickly from ceremony to action as players stepped onto the new courts.

The opening capped at least 12 months of coordination between the city and the health care district, but the planning behind it reaches further back. Zieba said Reedley first started thinking about roughly $2 million in improvements at Reedley Sports Park about two and a half years before the opening. In earlier public discussions, she tied the court changes to a public need that was first brought to the city’s attention in 2016.

That longer timeline matters because Reedley’s pickleball push has never been just about putting down fresh lines. The sports park property was a 49-acre site purchased in 2004, with a master plan created in 2008, and the new courts now give the city a visible first step inside a much larger park vision. For players who have made do with borrowed or off-hours space, the new pair of courts is the kind of starter project that can become a real destination if the city keeps building.

The courts also fit into a wider pattern of local support. In 2025, Sierra Kings Health Care District approved a $100,000 grant to install two public pickleball courts at the sports park, and in 2024 it backed staffing for pickleball courts at Kings Canyon Unified School District and Reedley College during off-hours. The district has also folded pickleball into broader wellness funding, alongside Rails to Trails and mental health programs.

Reedley itself, an incorporated agricultural community in southeast Fresno County with the Kings River running through it, has long been shaped more by farming and packing than by recreation branding. That is what made the scene at Sports Park feel notable: not a ribbon for ribbon’s sake, but two courts that gave the city a first real signal that pickleball has a home here, and maybe a future worth mapping.