Loma Linda Pickleball - Our History

The co-founder of LLPC, USA Pickleball Ambassador for Loma Linda and USA Pickleball Board of Directors member, Ernie Medina, Jr., credits his mom, Loida Medina, MD, for his getting into pickleball. And while that’s when he really got to try it and the addiction started, his very first time to try pickleball was just a few months before at a health fair being held at Burman University, in Lacombe, Canada, in January 2016. Ron Schafer was running a pickleball demo in the gym and that’s the very first time Ernie picked up a pickleball paddle. He thought it was an interesting game, but didn’t give it much thought, as he had a flight to catch later that morning. Fast forward to April 2016, when he got bit by the pickleball bug, when visiting his mom in Berrien Springs, MI, and really playing there for the first time.

As the Netflix hit show, “Living to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zone” revealed, Dr. Loida Medina is the “godmother” of Loma Linda pickleball. That’s because Ernie got hooked into pickleball while visiting her in April 2016. This time, he was hooked by his very first game, so when he came back home to Loma Linda, he couldn’t find pickleball anywhere around Loma Linda. So he gave up trying to play it once again.

On a second trip back to MI in June 2016, his mom had just purchased a brand new portable net which she asked him to set up in her driveway. This is where they had their first pickleball lesson by pro Laura Fenton Kovanda. This time, when he came back to Loma Linda, CA, Ernie had already ordered a net and in July of 2016, got to use it, not in Loma Linda, but at a private tennis court of his friends, Holly and Dee Elias’s home in Riverside. This was a July 4 get-together so he brought the net and paddles to his house to set up on the their tennis court. This is probably the first time pickleball was played in Riverside, that we know of.

After that July 4 weekend, Ernie invited some friends to Hulda Crooks Park’s tennis court to try out this new game. We had 2 nets, so we set up a net on either side of the tennis net and chalked out the courts. Notice our high quality wooden paddles. This group was the first ones to play pickleball in Loma Linda.

From that point on, the Loma Linda group kept growing, and the group bounced around from various locations, like a friend’s tennis court on Beaumont Ave, a private tennis court in the Orange Tree Lane homes, and eventually, Azure Hills Church basketball courts.

Finally, when the group was too big to manage, it was decided to go to a location where it could continue to grow without depending on any one person hauling all the nets every week. Even though he was by now, the USA Pickleball Loma Linda Ambassador, it was getting to be a bit too much to manage. So it was decided in the fall of 2016 to approach the Drayson Center at Loma Linda University. This is the wellness center for university students, faculty, staff, and community members. Hopefully, that location would be much more conducive to the growth, and it certainly has been!

During those early days at Drayson, we were still bringing in our own nets and chalking the lines, which was a back-breaking task, but we got it down with the help of all the players. We sometimes tried tape, but it would create a mess on the court when it started to break down. They would wash the courts EVERY week, washing away our lines, so we had to re-chalk every week after the courts were washed.

By January of 2017, the group playing at Drayson Center had grown to about 50-60 people, and this got the attention of the Drayson Center Administration. That’s when they decided to modify their plans for the repainting of the tennis courts and converted Court 2 to 4 permanent pball courts and painted lines on all the other tennis courts. (They were initially painted a different shade of blue, on a blue tennis court, and we could barely see them!!! So they were repainted to the current dark red.)

In October of 2017, we had the grand opening of the permanent court. It was the first huge pickleball event in the Inland Empire! We had players and clubs from all over SoCal visiting for this event. Almost 300 people came to see the largest number of courts in the IE in one place. Four pros were on hand to help kick things off as well: Marcin Rozpedski, Morgan Evans, Christine Trifunovic (aka: McGrath), and Laura Fenton Kovanda. While they played, Morgan gave a running commentary of what was happening on the court. It was a very entertaining exhibition match!

For a while, the Drayson Center was the ONLY pickleball game in the Inland Empire. Everyone from the surrounding cities came to Drayson to play pickleball. Eventually, the future founders of the various local clubs started thinking about starting a pickleball club and presence in their city. Since Ernie Medina, Jr. was the only USAP Ambassador in this area at the time, he helped the various players meet with city officials, drive around and scout out potential tennis courts, and give presentations to city councils. Once a place was selected and play started there, Ernie encouraged them to select their own ambassador to help run things there.

Over the years, LLPC and Drayson Center has been in the national media with pickleball, many of them firsts!

• First national commercial – Prudential, 2018

• Pickleball Channel’s video highlight of Loma Linda

• First show on Netflix with pickleball in it (Blue Zone show, Aug. 2022; Behind-the-Scenes video)

• KTLA Ch. 5 news, 2023

• A variety of Blue Zone shows done for international audiences