With the holidays now firmly in our rearview, clubs are already beginning to prepare for a busy summer season of pickleball. At The People’s Courts in Portland, Oregon, they plan to host a kids summer camp for kids to come and learn the game in a fun and exciting environment. The club itself focuses on more than just pickleball as they consider themselves a full-service entertainment venue with 11 pickleball courts, 5 bocce courts, 6 ping pong tables, 6 cornhole courts, and a 9-hole putt-style disc golf course. In addition to these activities, the club features two restaurants and bars as well as an arcade. With all of these entertainment elements, the summer camp at The People’s Courts is sure to be a kid’s Pacific Northwest paradise.
In Summer 2024, The People’s Court intends to hold both a half-day and full-day options for children in the community to enjoy pickleball and other activities at the club. During the half-day camp, which will be held in the mornings, participants will have the opportunity to play about two hours of pickleball with an additional hour and a half of other activities, such as potentially ping pong, bocce, and more. The full-day camp will mirror the half-day camp’s mornings and then be followed by lunch and even more pickleball play in the afternoon..
The primary target audience for the camp is “any child ages 8-14 who want to either learn the game of pickleball or improve their skills,” says Dave Sacks, owner of The People’s Courts. The club will be looking to invite kids from the local and neighboring communities and hope to be able to introduce the sport to many kids who have never picked up a paddle before. Sacks expects they will “have a lot of beginners, but [they] also plan to divide the kids up by skill level so that the more advanced kids will also have an enriching experience.”
The camp’s half-day option is planned to run from 8:30am-12:00pm while the full-day option will be held from 8:30am-3:00pm, leaving plenty of time for extra pickleball in the afternoons for participants to continue building upon what they learned during the morning. Sacks notes that both options will be offered from Monday through Thursday and hopes to “offer summer camps throughout the summer,” giving families ample options to enroll their kids in the camps depending on their summer schedules. In total, they expect to hold at least eight sessions of the camp to accommodate the demand from participants.
As of mid-January, The People’s Courts is looking to hire a Summer Camp Director to oversee all aspects of the camp and create the specific programming. They are using their website and social media channels as two primary means of soliciting for the job opening. In addition to the director position, Sacks will be looking to hire additional staff on a seasonal basis to account for the increased activity at the club due to the summer camps.
While they just opened in August 2023, The People’s Courts is looking forward to a bustling first summer season with the inclusion of a kids summer camp running through the majority of the summer. “We can’t wait to hold summer camps,” says Sacks. “We have so many offerings here that we think we’ll be able to provide kids with a fulfilling…experience.”
