By: Valentina Guo

Pickleball is growing in popularity as a sport, and so various towns are starting to open courts. This includes Apple Valley, the Centennial Sports Park in Virgil and the Walter Reed Community Center. There are many more, but these three are the ones who’ve interrupted the average neighbor’s sleep cycle, as some players, according to The New York Times, have “middle-of-the-night pickleball matches.” The neighbors interrupted include Diane Erickson in Apple Valley, (StarTribune) Oana Scafesi in the Centennial Sports Park in Virgil, (TORONTO STAR) and Mary Mckee in the Walter Reed Community (The New York Times).

In Apple Valley, Erickson said “Pop pop pop” noise from the pickleball racket’s contact with the pickleball is what keeps the neighbors awake at night. As a result, Diane Erickson had “ insulated the floor and ceiling in her TV room to drown out the din.”, as written by StarTribune. “After 20 minutes, my nerves can’t take it,” said Erickson. “I have to go in the house and isolate myself. It’s just constant noise.”

Diane has found herself in a debate with the other neighbors on a solution to this problem. They’ve suggested moving the court elsewhere, though the conveniently close-by locker rooms and bathrooms would also have to be moved.

Another neighbor with the same problem in a different place, Oana Scafesi, has taken matters into her own hands, bringing it to court against the town. Scafesi claimed that her town was violating its own law: “No person shall make, cause or permit sound or vibration at any time, which is likely to disturb the quiet, peace, rest, enjoyment, comfort or convenience of the inhabitants of the town.” She claims that this is a violation because of that same noise from pickleball, the contact between the racket and ball like a popcorn machine, described as “sporadic bursts that quickened, gradually, to an arrhythmic clatter.” by The New York Times.

“For the last three years I have been tortured by a high noise produced by the pickleball players,” Scafesi testified during a trial on the matter Wednesday morning in Welland court. “This affected my health, affected my work performance and affected, altogether, my life.”

Concrete walls have been installed, costing $100 a foot, to help decrease the noise. Other possible solutions included sound-deadening pickleball paddles, or relocated courts. But the problem still hasn’t been solved completely.

To sum up, TORONTO STAR wrote that “Scafesi said she moved to her home in Lambert’s Walk, a townhouse community directly adjacent to the sports park, in 2012 so she could ‘have a peaceful and quiet life, as any resident deserves and as any hard-working person deserves.’”

According to The New York Times, “McKee, 43, a conference planner, moved to the neighborhood in 2005 and for the next decade and a half enjoyed a mostly tranquil existence. Then came the pickleball players.”

“I thought maybe I could live with it, maybe it would fade into the background,” she said. “But it never did.” This ruckus had begun around the peak of the pandemic, and even with windows closed all around the house, she still hears and feels the vibration of the pickleball.

People other than Mary Mckee have also been complaining about the noise.

The New York Times gave a variety of different quotes from various different people. “‘It’s like having a pistol range in your backyard,’ said John Mancini, 82, whose Wellesley, Mass home abuts a cluster of public courts. ‘It’s a torture technique,’ said Clint Ellis, 37, who lives across the street from a private club in York, Maine. ‘Living here is hell,’ said Debbie Nagle, 67, whose gated community in Scottsdale, Ariz., installed courts a few years ago.”

Still, a good solution has yet to come for all of these pickleball problems.