Plant City expands adult sports with kickball, pickleball and tennis

Adult basketball in Plant City jumped from about 30 players to nearly 200, and that growth is now driving the city’s next move: a broader adult-sports slate that includes kickball, pickleball, golf and tennis. The newest piece is a fall adult kickball league, set for Wednesday nights from Sept. 3 to Oct. 29, with registration at $150 per team or $75 per individual for players 18 and older.

That expansion did not come out of nowhere. Plant City had gone more than five years without an adult basketball league before bringing it back, and the relaunch showed how much demand was sitting below the surface. The league started with seven 10-person teams, played three games each Wednesday over a seven-week regular season, and ended with a four-team playoff tournament. A $375 team fee was enough to fill the field, and that kind of response helped make the case for adding more low-barrier, social sports.

By April, Athletics Program Manager Trey Phillips said the city had already added adult kickball, adult dodgeball and an adult pickleball league, and was looking at adult volleyball and year-round cornhole tournaments. The city’s recreation registration site has widened beyond one-off offerings and now lists an Outdoor Pickleball League, Summer Golf Night, Summer Tennis Lessons and a 2v2 3-Point Shootout Competition, a sign that Plant City Parks & Recreation is building a full adult calendar rather than a single novelty program.

The facilities push has matched the programming push. The Sadye Gibbs Martin Community Center opened Aug. 17, 2020, giving the city a 30,000-square-foot multipurpose building with two full-sized basketball courts. The Plant City Tennis Center followed with a ribbon cutting on March 14, 2024, unveiling six lighted HydroGrid clay courts and four lighted hard courts. City officials have also pointed to the rebuilt Rowena Mays Athletic Park as another piece of the puzzle, with a budget of $5,889,766 and a 17-month construction timeline tied to tennis, basketball and pickleball use.

Pickleball has become part of the same surge. Plant City resident George Banning has played the sport for 10 years, and the city has said outdoor pickleball courts will soon be part of the mix. For Plant City, kickball is not an add-on. It is the next clean fit for a recreation system that has learned adults will show up when the field space, schedule and format are right.