Prince Albert home to newest pickleball dedicated facility

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A lot can change in just a few months. The left photo shows some of the work being done to the facility back in July while the right photo shows the same space from earlier this month, which is now home to two finished courts. (Image Credit: CrossCourt Pickleball Centre/Facebook)

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The idea for the centre came back in March 2022 when Graner first picked up a paddle. 

“My assistant from back in the day, she told me you should try this out. And so I went, looked at it, put a paddle in my hand and hit a ball, and I was instantly hooked. Within a month, I actually went to a tournament in Regina.” 

There, he met Phil Greenwood who founded the Queen City Pickleball Hub where the competition was being held. Graner said although he barely knew anything about the game, he was very impressed that they had their own facility to play, practice, and compete in. 

“I liked the way that they had their facilities set up; the permanent courts, nets in between so the balls wouldn’t go across, lines only for pickleball and not for all the other sports, and a great surface where the ball bounced just the way it should. I didn’t know any of this stuff, but I enjoyed that so much that I got this in my head that Prince Albert needs that 100 per cent.” 

Thursday was the final inspection for the facility, and marked their start as an official business as the city granted them a business license. The building they’re in was previously the home of Prairie Meats, and Graner said a lot of elbow grease had to be put into the building to turn it into the facility they have today.  

“We looked at a lot of different venues and either the size of the open space was too narrow or too short or had columns in them,” he said, adding one of the places they had checked out was inside the Gateway Mall.  

“Nothing really would have worked until this came up. There was a second story in the building, [and] I really had to visualize it with wide open eyes just to see if this was actually something that would work someday. I took the measuring tape, got the engineers to come out and did a feasibility study, and everything looked like it might work. When I see pictures from the old days before we started demolition, my goodness, what a difference. It turned out great.” 

With the ball rolling, CrossCourt is now offering memberships and lessons for residents of all ages and skill levels, and they even have a fall programming schedule made up from opening day through to Dec. 11. Tournaments and competitions are also something that’s being discussed, along with a potential unofficial partnership with TopZpin out of Saskatoon. 

“They’ve been talking to us a little bit that we could do something in like a team format, maybe travelling back and forth a little bit to make this an inter-city competition. There’s many, many ways to do it, but we haven’t really put anything in stone quite yet.” 

Although opening to the public on Monday, an official grand opening for the facility is being planned for later in the fall.

More information about the new CrossCourt Pickleball Centre can be found on their website and on their Facebook page. For more information about memberships, click here. 

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loganc.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com