Lincolnville hotel serves up pickleball tourney for season start

Provided photo Glenmoor By the Sea recently revamped its tennis court to accommodate pickleball, the country's fastest-growing sport.

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By Renee Cordes

Glenmoor By the Sea is located at 3143 Atlantic Highway, Route 1, in Lincolnville. Monday's pickleball tournament, open to the public to watch, is scheduled to begin at noon.
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Capitalizing on pickleball's growing popularity, Lincolnville innkeepers Millicent and Renato Kriste will start the season at Glenmoor By the Sea with a tournament next week on a brand-new court.

The hotel, which opens to guests today, will host its first-ever pickleball invitational on Monday, on a tennis court the couple recently had resurfaced and revamped with additional lines and nets for pickleball purposes.

Provided photo

Married couple Renato, left, and Millicent Kriste own Glenmoor By the Sea in Lincolnville.

"The whole theme is for fun's sake," Millicent Kriste told Mainebiz. "We're not serious pickleballers. It's all about raising money for charity and coming together to have some fun."

Participating teams are being asked to make a $100 donation, and the winning team will get to choose a Maine to give the funds to afterwards. There will also be a donation bucket at the event as well as raffle prizes donated by local businesses.

As of Thursday, seven teams were signed up for the event, all from the hospitality industry.

"If we don't find another team, we'll throw in a Glenmoor team," Kriste said. She and her husband are starting their seventh season as owners of "our slice of heaven," as they say on the company's website.

Spread over 12 acres, the beachfront property minutes from Camden Harbor can accommodate 33 guests. Amenities include two pools, disc-golf and horseshoe facilities and a new fire pit.

The season runs through mid-October, and 2023 "shaping up to be very busy" and on par with last year, according to Kriste. Monday's tournament is scheduled to start at noon and finish around 3 p.m.

"We hope to have a good turnout of spectators," Kriste said.

Pickeball pivot

The pickleball idea sprung out of a long-delayed intention to resurface the property's tennis court going back two and a half years.

"Since we took over this property, which was in OK condition, we've made our focus to constantly, feverishly upkeep and improve the property without changing it," Millicent Krise said. "The tennis court was getting to the point where if we didn't invest in it, it would have to go away."

For various reasons, it was impossible to find someone to do the renovations, she said. "Then when somebody finally could come out and do it, it was July 4th, and we couldn't do that."

Enter a plan to revamp the tennis court to accommodate pickleball, the country's fastest-growing sport.

"With the rise of pickleball, it seemed like the right investment," Kriste said without disclosing the amount.

The project entailed precision sealcoating and line striping "to help bring our old tennis court back to life" to accommodate pickleball, she explained.

Pickleball, invented in 1965 as a children's backyard game on Bainbridge Island, Wash., is played with paddles a baseball-sized wiffle ball and is sometimes described as a cross between tennis, badminton and ping-pong.

Today, close to 9 million people are estimated to play nationwide, making it the country's fastest-growing sport for the past three years.

'Good, clean fun'

Kathleen Pierce, director of membership and communication at HospitalityMaine, said the pickleball court gives the property an "edge," and that she expects others in the industry to follow suit.

“As the pickleball phenomenon shows no signs of abating, I suspect more tennis courts will be transformed at resorts with ample space," she said. "It’s good, clean fun.”

Elsewhere in Maine, construction on an indoor pickleball facility in South Portland called the Wicked Pickle is scheduled to start this month, while Pickleball Maine at Foreside Fitness & Tennis in Falmouth is doing a brisk business in classes, family bookings and corporate wellness days.

"The pickleball craze has taken off much like tennis did in the 1970s," said Wayne St. Peter, a certified pickleball instructor who launched Pickleball Maine two years ago. "It's not just for older people, but younger people are paddling, too."