Drop-In Play

Drop-in play at our Whittier and Upton Park courts is available whenever a SMPA event is not running at the courts!

Please see the current month’s Court Usage Calendar (accessible from this website’s homepage) to see when drop-in play is running v when permitted events like leagues have exclusive access to the courts.

Court Sharing Rules:

• Neither SMPA nor the city of Royal Oak has historically dictated formal rules for our courts leaving both sets open to players of all levels except when courts are reserved for SMPA events (see Leagues & Mixers, Lessons, Tournaments, and Clinics & More).
• However, problems have arisen in each of the past many years: complaints have been raised at multiple SMPA board meetings, complaints have been made to the city, petitions have been presented to SMPA by the membership, and attempts to reign in the poor court sharing practices of key individual players (many of whom are disappointingly former SMPA board members working against SMPA, SMPA’s members, and the city of Royal Oak) have failed repeatedly.
• Therefore, over the 2021-2022 winter indoor season, a rules committee comprised of Whittier players, Upton players, and SMPA board members – chaired by then SMPA president Heather Siersma, attempted to create a rule-set to address and minimize SMPA’s long-standing and well-known court-sharing problems.
• Unfortunately, many of the Upton players and much of the SMPA board chose to pretend court-sharing problems do not exist at all and subsequently worked against the creation of court-sharing rules. 🙁
• So in early 2022, the city of Royal Oak stepped in to produce and post court-sharing rules at both sets of courts. These posted rules were supplemented by the city with additional rules signage posted inside the courts as well as outside. Players violating these now posted rules may be banned from the courts if the current SMPA board (which retains only Heather Siersma from the former board, having replaced all other former board members) and/or the city determines that is best for the broader community.
• We really hope that everyone will follow the new rules and that the community will have a better overall pickleball experience because of them!

The new rules state the following:

• The courts are for public use
• The monopolizing of courts in any way is prohibited (no pulling any courts out of general rotation; no chairs on courts to “reserve” them, etc.)
• No private lessons are allowed
• Once a game is finished, the next group designated as waiting (up to 4 players, according to the posted Paddle Rack Court Sharing Rules) may take the court and start a new game
• If players are waiting, limit play to one game to 11, win by 2

Please know that despite the posted rules there are groups who refuse to follow the city’s court-sharing rules, particularly at Upton Park, asserting a false claim to the courts as belonging only to them. Some of these group members have even gone so far as to falsely claim they are SMPA, and one such group has established a facebook page which uses our name without being affiliated with us to push their court monopolization agenda and implicate us as the rules violators they actually are. Please also know these groups are wrong to do this, they know they are wrong, and they seem to hope you don’t know they are wrong. One of these groups has even gone so far as to set up a facebook page with SMPA’s name on it where they assert their selfish falsehoods both publicly and also as if they are backed by us – they are not. SMPA backs the city of Royal Oak – our pickleball court landlord, and SMPA supports that, whenever SMPA is not running a city permitted event, the courts are for all SMPA members and non-members alike regardless of playing level, group association, or anything else. While the mean behavior of groups like this makes us sad (and ultimately harms them along with us and the greater player community), there is little we can do to curb their bad behavior beyond educate you all about our legitimate work in contrast to their selfish and often libelous dishonesty. Ultimately it is up to each player to know the rules, follow the rules, and encourage others to follow the rules for the benefit of all.

If all court users annually donated the $25 SMPA membership fee, we would likely reach our monetary goal for 2025 court expansion. Further, if those in the groups who regularly hold the courts only for themselves and their friends actually worked with SMPA and Royal Oak for the good of the entire community, financially supporting Royal Oak pickleball (most are not SMPA members and many are also not RO residents) and supporting the broader pickelball community by following the city’s posted court sharing rules, we’d be even nearer to our goal of adding a 3rd fleet of pickleball courts ~2030! With more courts, comes more opportunity for leveled pickleball play – a situation which our current 15 total courts doesn’t allow. So by continuously working against SMPA and Royal Oak, these groups are actually working against themselves too as more courts is the only thing that will ever allow for a situation in which leveled drop-in play (i.e., the courts being reserved without permit for only certain groups of players) is possible. We here at SMPA continue to hope that eventually these group members will see the great error of their ways, even if only as a means to the same end for which they currently strive. Their current means is abusive to the community, and is a disappointing display of bad-humaning. 🙁

Please see Facilities for our court locations and operating hours.