A grant from a housing association has enabled a North Yorkshire sports club to offer sessions in one of the UK’s fastest-growing sports.

Pickleball can be played anywhere there is a bit of space, indoors and out, grass or hard surface. It combines elements of tennis, badminton, and ping-pong using a paddle and plastic ball with holes.

Great Broughton and Kirkby sports club, near Stokesley, used a Broadacres grant of £466 to buy equipment feeling they could use existing courts, and the activity would be good for more elderly members who were finding tennis too painful. To their delight, they found youngsters from the local primary school really enjoy playing as well.

“In pickleball you serve underarm, and the paddle is lighter and easier to handle than a tennis racquet,” said committee member Philip Marshall.

(Image: SHAEFER PR)

“This cuts out all the aches and pains of overarm serves and shots and we’ve now found it also acts as an introductory game for tennis. It’s for everyone really and you can play competitively, for fun or simply for exercise.”

The sports club has 150 members as well as social members and juniors. As well as offering football, cricket, tennis and now pickleball, the facility acts as a social hub for the village with a thriving bridge club and venue for barbeques, carnivals and other events.

“Some funding streams can be very rigid on what the money can be used for and there’s a lot of form filling," said Philip.

“The beauty of the Broadacres grant is that they provide money to support the ideas of community groups, and this has worked really well for us, we’ve had lots of people from across the generations trying something new.”

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The Broadacres Community Development Fund supports local organisations, groups, and projects in areas where Broadacres has homes.

All grants are approved by the Association’s own residents via a voting scheme using tokens similar to how Tesco awards grants in its stores.

To apply to the Fund visit https://www.broadacres.org.uk/customer-area/getting-involved/community-development-fund/