How Oak Island's Pickleball Scene Outgrew Its Own Courts, Twice

Drive past Middleton Park this week and you will hear it before you see it. The Town of Oak Island's Pickleball Academy is running its second summer session right now, weekday mornings through August 21, on the twelve courts tucked behind Town Hall. It is a formal, fee-based program with a sign-up sheet and an hourly schedule. It is also, if you trace the timeline back far enough, the least surprising thing that has happened to those courts in the last decade. Every expansion at Middleton Park has followed the same pattern. Players show up. The courts fill. The town approves the money to catch up.

That order of operations matters if you live here and wonder why the courts keep changing, or why a corner of the park that used to be quiet on weekday mornings is now the busiest patch of asphalt on the island by early evening.

Four Shared Courts and a Monday Morning Habit

Before there were twelve dedicated pickleball courts, there were four tennis courts and a standing arrangement. Regulars gathered behind Town Hall on Mondays and Wednesdays, taught newcomers on the spot, and shared the space with whoever else wanted to hit a tennis ball that day. There was no dedicated pickleball footprint. There was just a habit that a handful of residents kept alive long enough for the town to notice.

The town noticed in 2017, when it striped six dedicated pickleball courts at Middleton Park, the first real acknowledgment that this was no longer a tennis-court sideshow. For a few years, six courts were enough.

Then they stopped being enough.

When the Surface Gave Out Before the Budget Caught Up

By early 2024, an assessment of the Middleton Park courts found they had already outlived their normal surface life. Councilmember Terri Cartner raised the obvious question at the February 13 council meeting: why keep spending money patching courts that were already past their useful life instead of planning for what came next. Councilman John Bach pushed further, arguing the town needed a real infrastructure plan rather than another one-off fix.

Town Manager David Kelly's answer was blunt.

"I think we've looked at all of the options, and this is the best we can do currently."

The council approved a $274,668 contract that converted two more tennis courts into pickleball courts, brought the total to twelve, and added bleachers behind the public works building. Public Works Director Scott Thurnall specified a mesh resurfacing material designed to buy roughly a decade before the next major repair, a deliberate attempt to stop the patchwork cycle Cartner had called out. The courts closed for construction starting March 10, 2024, and reopened a few weeks later with double the footprint they'd had for the previous seven years.

That is two expansions in seven years, both arriving after the existing courts were already stretched past capacity. Neither was framed as visionary. Both were framed, by the people voting on them, as catching up.

The Club the Town Didn't Start

While the town was debating resurfacing budgets, the players kept organizing themselves. What began as that informal Monday-Wednesday group has grown into Oak Island Beach Pickles, an unofficial club that had passed 200 members by the spring of 2025. Paul Dubay, a member of the town's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, described the current reality plainly: on a given summer night, all twelve courts are packed.

Dubay's read on why is worth sitting with:

"Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the country over the past five years. I think the economic impact will be pretty significant for the area."

The club's growth has pulled in players from well outside Oak Island. When organizers partnered with the Southern Pickleball Association to promote a 2025 tournament, the SPA's database drew competitors from West Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, not just the surrounding Brunswick County towns. A recreational habit that started with four shared courts and a handful of regulars now has out-of-state players planning trips around it.

The Fundraiser Building Alongside the Budget

The Oak Island Friends of Parks Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, has run a pickleball fundraiser at Middleton Park for years under the name Battle at the Beach, reaching its sixth annual event in April 2024. The tournament has since been rebranded as the Oak Island Beach Pickles Spring Classic, and the 2026 edition closed registration early after hitting capacity. Proceeds go directly toward park improvements, which means a meaningful share of whatever comes next at Middleton Park, benches, shade structures, additional resurfacing, is being funded by the players themselves rather than waiting on another council budget cycle.

That detail reframes the whole arc. The town supplied the asphalt, twice, after the fact. The club supplied the demand. The nonprofit is now supplying part of the capital. At no point has a masterplan preceded the need. The need has consistently preceded the plan.

What's Actually Happening at the Courts This Month

The current Pickleball Academy session, running weekdays from August 3 through August 21 at the Middleton Park Racquet Courts, is the most institutional the town's involvement has ever gotten. For a $100 fee, players age 12 and up get a full week of one-hour daily lessons, run by the Parks and Recreation Department rather than a volunteer regular showing someone the ropes between games. It is a small thing, but it marks a shift: the informal teaching that built this scene in its earliest years is now a line item on the town's program calendar.

Whether that formal structure keeps pace with demand is the open question. Bach's comment about needing a real infrastructure plan, not another patchwork fix, was made in the same meeting that approved the current twelve-court layout. If the pattern holds, the next expansion at Middleton Park will follow the same sequence as the last two: players will fill the courts past comfortable capacity first, and the town will vote on money to catch up sometime after.

Why This Is Worth Knowing If You Live Here

If you already have a paddle, the practical takeaway is simple. Summer evenings at Middleton Park mean twelve full courts and a wait, and the club culture here leans generous toward beginners, a habit that goes back to those original Monday-Wednesday sessions behind Town Hall. If you don't play yet, the current academy session and the fact that Oak Island Beach Pickles has crossed 200 members suggest this is not a fad that is going to quietly recede once the summer crowds thin out.

The broader pattern is worth knowing too, because it says something true about how this island actually operates. Big civic amenities here rarely arrive as grand plans. They arrive as reactions to something residents already built informally and outgrew. Twelve courts at Middleton Park is not the ceiling. It is just the most recent point where demand got loud enough for the town to respond.

I keep half an eye on stories like this one because they tell you more about a place than a brochure ever could. If you are the kind of person who wants to understand how a coastal town actually functions, court by court and council vote by council vote, before you make any decisions about property here, that is exactly the lens Marc Stollings brings to Oak Island. Let's Connect.