It was a celebration Sunday morning as the newly refurbished Princeville pickleball and basketball court at Emmalani Park opened to the public.
The event was also a birthday party for the chief contractor on the project, Bob Day, 80, who was showered in champagne when he arrived at the court.
“I had a great team of volunteers,” said Day. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”
The Princeville pickleball community, which Day reports is large and growing, had been left without a decent court to play on for nearly a year.
“(The court) has been in terrible disrepair for the last year or so,” said Princeville resident Karen Shrimpton. “It was becoming more and more dangerous to play on without people getting injured.”
Day said that the Princeville Community Association had received bids in the $50,000 range to repair the court, more than the association could budget. Day, a retired contractor, offered instead to assemble a team of volunteers to fix the courts for $15,000, which was within the budget.
“None of the volunteers, including myself, received any compensation for completing the job,” he said.
This was Day’s first pickleball-court refurbishing, and he learned how to do it by watching YouTube videos.
His team covered the entire court in fiberglass mat before applying acrylic resurfacing materials. The project took hundreds of hours of labor, longer than anticipated, due to heavy December rains, but was finally completed this January.
Karen and her husband Tim Shrimpton opened their home and garden — situated next to the pickleball court on Emmalani Drive — for a potluck barbecue party Sunday morning. The nearly 50 guests ate, drank and broke in the new courts with inaugural pickleball games.
“Everyone had a fabulous time,” said Shrimpton.
The court is open to the general public from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Princeville Community Association asks that music and noise be kept to a reasonable level. Skateboards, bikes and scooters are not allowed on the court.
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Guthrie Scrimgeour, reporter, can be reached at 647-0329 or gscrimgeour@thegardenisland.com.
