‘The game certainly has grown’: How one player’s efforts boosted pickleball’s popularity in the Tri-Cities

One might be inclined to tag Cris Anderson as the “Queen of Pickleball” in St. Charles. And that’s certainly not a stretch.

Spotting Anderson recently playing pickleball reminded me of her role in getting this highly popular game off the ground in the Tri-Cities area.

She was the first person who mentioned the game to me — and that was about 18 years ago. There were no pickleball courts around here, which means very few people, if any, knew what it was.

But Anderson, a prolific volleyball player and a lover of other sports in her birthplace of Porto Alegre, Brazil, went far beyond mentioning a game she discovered and thought had potential to catch on.

When the St. Charles Park District added a “drop in and play” pickleball option to its winter brochure in 2010, it had Anderson’s work behind the scenes from the previous three years written all over it.

“I used to go to a Huntley Park District facility because a friend from my garden club lived up there and told me to try this new game,” Anderson said. “She knew I liked sports, so I went for a couple of months and liked it.”

Her husband, Colonial Ice Cream president Tom Anderson, encouraged her to somehow bring the game to St. Charles. That idea in 2008 turned into using Colonial’s facility at Randall and Dean streets in St. Charles for some makeshift courts.

“It was a project to do it, setting up old-fashioned pickleball courts,” she said. “But we had about 20 couples who signed up to try it and play there.”

Nobody knew much about the game, and after about two or three months of playing at Colonial, Anderson reached out to St. Charles Park District supervisor Jim Breen and recreation supervisor Holly Cabel to join her for a game up in Huntley.

Cabel, now the St. Charles Park District director, said the park district added pickleball as a drop-in activity in the spring of 2010, about a year after spending time with Anderson in that first outing to Huntley and several other times at the Colonial facility.

“Between our leagues, and tournaments and drop-in play, the game certainly has grown since then,” said Cabel, who noted the park district has 13 outdoor courts and plenty of indoor space for courts at the Haines Gymnasium, Norris Recreation Center and Pottawatomie Park Community Center.

“People forget that our first outdoor court in 2014 was a single court at the Belgium Town Park (on Ninth Street, just north of Dean Street),” Cabel added. “We then added some at James Breen Community Park and six more at Pottawatomie Park.”

The pickleball craze eventually filtered to other communities, like Geneva, where pickleball is in full swing indoors at the Stephen Persinger Recreation Center and outdoors at the Mill Creek Community Park.

However, the most recent pickleball boom centers on private clubs and developers reusing older retail space for indoor courts. All along, the sport has evolved like any other, Cabel noted, because leagues and tournaments have to cater to players with different skill levels.

“It all starts dividing up between recreational players and those who like more competitive play,” she explained. “We realized we needed areas for both beginners and competitive players. When we do tournaments or leagues, we want everyone playing at the level they can enjoy.”

It’s all music to Anderson’s ears. She was quick to point to Joy Duerr as a person who was instrumental in getting pickleball noticed. Joy and her late husband, Jon, were among the first couples to play at the Colonial building, and she became Anderson’s “computer expert” in helping write up information about pickleball and spreading the word.

The game has become so popular it has its own National Pickleball Month, which just happens to be this month. After all, the game has its roots all the way back to the mid-1960s, when it was first played in the state of Washington as sort of a new take on badminton.

Still, this is a good month to realize pickleball represents a 17-year love affair for Anderson. That’s a good run for an athlete who devoted much of her time to highly competitive volleyball in Brazil. Upon marrying Tom and coming to St. Charles in 1972, she became a women’s volleyball coach for those 18 and older.

From that standpoint, she knows a little bit about how pickleball can translate to younger athletes today — even though it may have an image as something only older folks enjoy.

“I am 76, and now there are kids playing pickleball who are 21 or younger,” Anderson laughed. “That was the way I approached the game with the park district years ago — that it is an intergenerational game. I can teach my grandkids how to play pickleball.”

‘Mosaic’ coming soon

The window sign on the former Pho Xich Lo Vietnamese restaurant site at 507 S. Third St., Suite A, tells us a place called Mosaic Kitchen & Cocktails is coming soon.

The city’s building permit shows the property owner as Wessel Court East LLC, a business entity of Shodeen Group LLC. Justin Rios of Hanover Park is listed as the contractor.

However, the change of tenant portion of the permit shows the coming business as “Mosaic Bar and Grill.” Permits often don’t have the exact name of a new tenant.

The restaurant’s website is more specific with the name Mosaic Kitchen & Cocktails, touting “cafe and kitchen hours.” So, it’s likely a combination of the aforementioned business titles. It will be more like a coffee shop earlier in the day, and a restaurant later in the day.

As of earlier this week, the site did not have a menu posted, but hinted of offering authentic flavors for a “Mediterranean escape.”

A timer on the mosaicgeneva.com site is counting down the days, hours and minutes until it opens. If my math is correct, by the time this column is published, the countdown clock for Mosaic should be hovering around 51 days until the restaurant opens.

Recognition in the park

We all enjoy the colorful daffodils planted along the west end of Mount St. Mary Park in St. Charles, and it’s that time of year when the River Corridor Foundation of St. Charles acknowledges those volunteers who take the time to plant them each fall.

The foundation is asking all of those volunteers to show up at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 23, to take a photo of that group with the 25,000 blooming daffodils as the backdrop.

After that “celebratory group photo,” the foundation members will present their 2024 Golden Turtle Awards under the park pavilion to Dr. Al Patten and the late Maurine Patten, and the St. Charles Public Works Department.

In an interesting twist, it was Al Patten who created the Golden Turtle Award for the foundation to recognize people who best represent the foundation and its goals. Members of the foundation felt it was time he and Maurine, founders of Project Gratitude in St. Charles, were honored with that award.

The public works department is being recognized for its consistent support of the foundation’s efforts along the Fox River in St. Charles, especially the Legacy Bricks placed along the Bob Leonard Walkway.

Those attending the photo and awards ceremony are invited to Alter Brewing afterward. Alter Brewing is donating $1 to the river foundation from every adult beverage sold.

For Nala and others

It’s tough to follow social media posts about missing dogs when those threads ultimately reveal the dog did not survive or was never found. That’s why we almost always share those posts early on, in hopes the wandering animal can be found safely and brought home.

Starting in May, the Batavia Popcorn Depot, at 1 N. Water St., is collecting donations to buy a bench for Laurelwood Park in Batavia in memory of Nala, a dog that did not return home safely, and for other pets that have passed away.

A note being reposted on Facebook says the search for Nala brought the community together and the bench memorial can be a way to keep Nala’s memory alive.

“The community’s love and compassion echoed in a relentless search for Nala,” the post stated. “Nala brought us all together and, for that, she must be remembered in a positive light.”

Did you know?

It’s been more than 60 years since the sound of a bowling ball knocking down pins has been heard in downtown Geneva.

That’s because a small bowling alley called Geneva Lanes has been part of city history and in the memories of only those who played there for recreation or as part of the bowling league tournaments held there.

It actually would have been hard to hear any of the bowling matches taking place because Geneva Lanes could be found by walking down a stairway to the basement of a building just to the east of what is now the Aurelio’s Pizza restaurant at 330 W. State St.

Bowlers I spoke to in the mid 1990s about Geneva Lanes estimated the bowling alley closed in the early 1960s.

• dheun@sbcglobal.net