Ridgway Athletic Park

Planning a visit to Ridgway Athletic Park? Below you will find venue details, amenities, and upcoming tournaments and events hosted here. Visit the Ridgway Athletic Park website →

Planning a visit to Ridgway Athletic Park? Below you will find court details, amenities, and upcoming tournaments and sporting events hosted at this venue, plus everything you need to book your next session. Plan your visit to Ridgway Athletic Park

Venue Overview

Ridgway Athletic Park is an 18.5-acre town park at County Road 23 and Chipeta Drive, with 360-degree San Juan mountain views and a genuinely unusual constraint: Ridgway is a certified International Dark-Sky Community, so there is no sports lighting anywhere in the park, and any future lighting has to be designed within Dark Sky limits. Play here is daylight only. A 200-plus member pickleball club runs six days a week on seven shared-use courts while fundraising toward a permanent eight-court complex.

About the Courts

Seven pickleball courts, all outdoor and all dual-striped onto existing surfaces: four laid over the two tennis courts at the north end by Chipeta Drive, and three more over the full-size basketball court beside them. When the tennis courts fill, overflow play moves to the basketball courts to the east. The striping is permanent, not temporary. The Town's Athletic Park Master Plan states the dual pickleball striping will remain even as the new complex is developed, and Phase 5 includes resurfacing the tennis courts with dual pickleball striping. What is temporary is the equipment: the Ridgway Pickleball Club owns and maintains the portable nets, balls and loaner paddles. Surface material is not published; the club calls them the cement courts. There is no lighting.

The Eight-Court Complex Being Built

A dedicated eight-court complex is planned for the park's southeast corner, with individually fenced courts, windscreens, bleachers, shade structures, shaded viewing areas with benches between courts, and vegetated noise berms, plus contemplated future expansion for four more. As of the Town's August 2025 update it was still in design, with a public open house on draft construction documents held August 28, 2025. The club is fundraising toward a 500,000 dollar goal. It is planned, not built.

Facilities & Amenities

• Seven dual-striped outdoor pickleball courts, no lighting
• Pavilion built in 2020, centrally located, with a concessions area and ten-plus picnic tables, usable for events
• Gazebo off the walking path near the Chipeta Drive entrance
• Restrooms with four stalls by the pavilion, plus an outdoor water fountain and bottle-filling station
• 0.4 miles of paved and unpaved walking paths, trash receptacles and custom bike racks
• Gravel parking: 85 spaces at the large lot, 18 at the small northeast lot, with room for roughly 50 more vehicles on CR 23 and Chipeta Dr

Also in the park: a 5,000 square foot skate park built in 2006, five soccer fields, a youth-league baseball field, and a bike park parcel at the southeast corner leased to Ridgway Bike Park but not yet developed. There is no pro shop, no locker rooms, no permanent bleachers at the courts and no playground yet, though one is proposed.

Lessons & Instruction

Ridgway Pickleball Club, a 501(c)(3) active in town since 2015 and now more than 200 members, runs open play six days a week from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday are competitive and recreational, Tuesday and Thursday lean social. Play at any other time is considered private invited play. Members coordinate daily through the TeamReach app. The club offers free introductory lessons and loaner paddles for beginners and skill development clinics for experienced players; an Introduction to Pickleball for Beginners is scheduled for September 1, 2026 on the basketball courts. No individual coaches are named.

Leagues & Events

The San Juan Slam is the club's Western Slope regional tournament, in its fourth year, with Citizen's State Bank as presenting sponsor and the Town of Ridgway as a partner. The 2026 edition runs September 18 to 20: women's doubles Friday, mixed Saturday, men's Sunday. Format is team round-robin pool play with medal rounds, in 3.5-and-under and 4.0-plus brackets with under-50 and over-50 age divisions. DUPR is used for seeding but results are not reported to DUPR. There are T-shirts, light snacks and a Dogs of the San Juan Slam pet photo event. Tournament play uses portable SwiftNets on the tennis courts with Selkirk balls; the cement courts are available for warmup.

Planning Your Sporting Event Here

The park handles a three-day regional tournament well: over 150 parking spaces, an events-capable pavilion with concessions, four-stall restrooms and a strong volunteer club. Plan around daylight, since there are no lights. The Town publishes court priority rules: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday mornings for pickleball, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings for tennis, first-come first-served outside those windows, and a one-set-or-one-hour limit when others are waiting. There is no booking system; events are permitted through Ridgway Town Hall. Drop-in visitors at club open play sign a player release waiver.

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