Habitat: Home Courts

This multiuse court in the East Bay hills is situated next to hiking trails.

Courtesy of Sport Court Northern California

By Kimberly Olson, Diablo

Inviting friends over to shoot hoops in your driveway is one thing. Then there’s the level up: treating yourself to a custom-designed basketball court in your own backyard. No more waiting for court time. Just grab your ball and step outside.

At-home sport courts—featuring elements ranging 
from tennis and futsal courts to putting greens—are being 
installed by everyone from competing athletes and weekend warriors to parents hoping to give their kids a convenient place to play their favorite sport. (Such parents have learned that a sport court tends to up your yard’s cool factor, making your house the neighborhood kids’ hangout.)

As pickleball booms—with more than four million players 
in the United States—home pickleball courts are especially in demand. “Pickleball is a big up-and-coming court right now because there’s no barrier to play like in tennis, which requires more training,” says Barrett Park, president of Sport Court Northern California, who is a Class A general engineer and court builder certified by the American Sports Builders Association. “Pickleball is a shorter court and it’s easier for people to learn how to play and have fun.”

Beyond their convenience, quality at-home sport courts can be gentler on the body than many public courts. “The surfaces that we manufacture are extremely orthopedic as far as protecting young, developing legs,” Park says. “They also work for older, aging legs.”

While providing shock absorption, the surfaces Park’s company uses are still hard enough to provide proper ball bounce. And because the surfaces are manufactured in various colors, they don’t fade over time like a painted asphalt or concrete court might. In fact, elite athletes like Golden State Warriors phenom Stephen Curry turn to Park’s company when building their own courts.

Sport Court Northern California has partnered with Steph and Ayesha Curry’s give-back program—Eat. Learn. Play.—to build courts for the City of Oakland and local schools like Franklin Elementary in Oakland. “That provided Steph and Ayesha the ability to customize the courts with graphics and put their branding on the courts, all while providing a safe surface for these kids to play on every day,” says Park.

But you don’t have to be a pro athlete to get a customized sport court. Park and his team design each court to meet the client’s needs and desires—perhaps adding a cool custom logo, special lighting, or a retractable batting cage or a rebound system for kicking soccer balls.

This pickleball court in the East Bay features an adjoining workout room.

Courtesy of Sport Court Northern California

The craziest [requests] we get are when we have someone who wants to build a court on the side of a hill,” Park says. “That’s going to require a more significant 
investment, but there are very few places where we can’t build a court. My father started this company 45 years ago. It’s been in our family that long and we’ve had a lot of the same clients in that span of time, so there’s a knowledge base that’s unmatched.”

Along with that knowledge comes innovation. Many of Park’s customers want bocce courts, for example, but traditional courts have their troubles. “People generally put in organic surfaces like oyster shells or decomposed granite, and the courts become these cat litter boxes, because algae and things grow on the surface and grass grows through it,” says Park. “Every time you play, you’re supposed to rake it, broom it, wet it, and roll it. Some people enjoy the zen part of that, but a typical bocce player is not interested in that, so we’ve patented a couple surfaces that eliminate that process.”

With people heading outdoors to socialize, at-home sport courts provide the 
opportunity to do so while getting the blood pumping. “It’s all about being outside,” Park says. “Before, I think homeowners maybe hesitated to improve their backyards and some of the amenities they had outside, but this pandemic gave people that nudge.”

Kimberly Olson is a Diablo reporter.

See the full article here. | SOURCE: diablo