New Stone lake pickleball courts dedicated

“You probably know someone who plays pickleball and loves it. There are several new courts popping up all around the area. Cable added courts, Silverthorn Park added a new court recently and so did First Lutheran Church in their parking lot. There are also courts going into the Hayward schools.

On Friday May 17, we celebrated the grand opening of two new courts at the Stone Lake Lions Park. We had a great turnout for our grand opening.

We currently have 174 on our email list, and 55 were able to join us on Friday, May 17th at the Stone Lake Lions Park for our grand opening. Thank you to everyone who attended the event. We had great food, several pickleball raffle prizes and a 50/50 raffle. Our ribbon cutting was done by Sue Johnson and Tera Parker from Essentia Health and Jo Smith, Marcia McIntosh, and Kym Kirk from the Stone Lake pickleball club.

Brief recap:

We started working on plans for the courts in May, 2022. It’s been two years, $33,200 and hundreds of volunteer hours later and we have two great courts.

Thank you donors for your generous donations and on-going commitments, and to those that lead our fundraising events.

Thank you Essentia for the $10,000 grant.

Thank you Stone Lake Lions for the park, the pavilion and the new bench by the courts.

Thank you to everyone who donated their time to build these courts and continue to improve and maintain them.

Thank you Northwoods Tennis club for the wind screens and to Marcia McIntosh for hemming them.

Thank you to Jeff Warren for leading our on-going landscaping work.

Thank you Chuck Rassbach for volunteering to make racket racks to help with rotating onto the courts.

If you’d like to play pickleball on the Stone Lake courts, go to the Playtime scheduler website at playtimescheduler.com to see availability during the week. We have four two-hour play times scheduled throughout the week and anyone is welcome to join. Weekends cannot be reserved and are open to the public. Contact Kym Kirk at kymjokirk@gmail.com for more information.

Upcoming event: We will be holding our third annual Fourth of July pickleball tournament beginning at 10 a.m. at the Stone Lake Lions Park. It will be a round robin format and the cost is $20, limited to the first 16 players. Please contact Jo Smith at joleen1276@gmail.com if you’d like to sign up.