My husband and I were mentioned in the April 22nd article about Rengstorff Park's tennis courts being used for pickleball. While the article presented a balanced view of the conflict in using the courts for both pickleball and tennis, Monica Williams (also mentioned in the article) has characterized the tennis players -- who have found the dual use of the court challenging -- as a "whining of a bunch of spoilsports". In using such a characterization, Ms. Williams distracts from valid opinions held by those who feel the courts are being adversely affected by the lines and noise of pickleball. There should be an open and respectful dialog between the two points of view about tennis court usage, and if pickleball is to become the highly popular sport Ms. Williams is promoting, this dialog should be taken to the level of a public hearing on the matter. If pickleball does grow the way Ms. Williams wants to see occur, it would be in the interest of the City of Mountain View to consider funding and building dedicated pickleball courts.

This is an interesting subject to me because I play both tennis and pickleball. The 8 tennis courts at Rengstorff are often mostly empty on weekday mornings. Given the lack of money and land to build dedicated pickleball courts, painted blended lines on a few tennis courts does seem like a decent compromise. I believe the Mountain View Tennis Advisory Board and the Mountain View Tennis Club have already come to the same conclusion.

In addiotion, I'd like to point out to Ms. Anderson that the phrase "whining of a bunch of spoilsports" was not a quote from Ms. Williams. It was the writer's words attributed to her. I do know Ms. Williams and cannot imagine her using that particular phrase.

In response to Ms. Anderson's post I agree that reporter, Mark Noack, wrote an excellent article that was fair to the concerns of both tennis players and pickleball players alike. However, I was surprised to read “to Williams, this sounds like a bunch of whining spoilsports.” This must have been a quote from someone else because I didn’t say that, and never would. Also, there has been an open and respectful dialogue since attending and speaking at the Mountain View Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting in April 2014, to attending Senior Advisory Committee Meetings, Tennis Advisory Committee Meetings and multiple meetings at the Recreation Department for over the past two years.

Hi folks,

I thought I should clear the air on something a few of you have pointed out. Both the main sources in this story have reached out to me with concerns about the line in my story referring to "spoilsports"

Just to be clear, Ms. Williams never literally said those words. It was my word choice from trying to boil down what Ms. Williams told me in an interview. I wrote that line to segue to her reaction to her critics, and maybe I used too much levity in this case. I wouldn't say this was inaccurate, but looking back on it, it does seem clumsy.

Obviously, there's two groups here in conflict over a fundamental disagreement - but no one has resorted to name-calling or impugning each others' character. Everyone named in this article has been courteous, and it sounds like they're all doing the right thing by trying to sort this out through the city.

Please believe me when I say I wasn't trying to throw fuel on the fire here.

Thanks,

-- Mark