Shannon Lake Court Usage Update

You may have noticed a change in the court availability at the Shannon Lake Courts. The city has made the baffling decision to remove 2 mornings (40%) of our midweek court availability and give it to tennis after receiving a handful of complaints from a few tennis players. When we learned of the change we did present the city with data from the month of June that showed that there were about 100 bookings (so about 400 players) that used the Shannon Lake courts. We also pointed out that the people in the neighborhood have reported that historically the courts only receive minimal, sporadic tennis usage (a generous estimate of 30 players per month was offered by a resident who keeps an eye on the courts). Our point was that, with all due respect to tennis players, the decision to assign 40% of the midweek court times doesn’t line up with the facts. We do acknowledge that tennis players need places to play but our position was that the participation numbers favour providing tennis players with 1 midweek day (20%) plus weekend play rather than 40% of the midweek times.

We do plan on bringing this topic up with the city at the end of the season. In order to help us collect data and make our case (as well as providing a playing option for the people on our membership waitlist) we are going to make a few changes:

• We are going to invite people who didn’t register in time for the 2025 WKPC membership and are currently on our waiting list to sign up for a Shannon Lake Courts membership. The benefits to them include:

  • Access to the net storage container

  • The ability to reserve a court online at Shannon Lake

  • Notification of when the 2026 membership will open (they will be able to apply for 2026 full membership after current members have had their chance but before the general public does)

  • They will be contacted if space becomes available in any of our special events

• In order for these new members to reserve a court at Shannon Lake we needed to create a new Hold My Court calendar. This calendar will be used by full members as well as this new Shannon Lake Courts membership. Having a separate Shannon Lake Court HMC booking calendar is the only way that we can ensure that the new membership group can only reserve courts at Shannon Lake and not at Mt Boucherie. So you will notice that on our Hold My Court page there are now 2 HMC calendars. 

So what this means to our full members is that if you want to book a court at Shannon Lake you will need to access the new Shannon Lake calendar (you can use the same username and password that you used on HMC in the past). We understand that creating 2 separate calendars is not as efficient as having all court options on one page but it is the best that we can do for the remainder of this year. Next season we will most likely shift back to 1 calendar for both sites. 

We hope that by providing more people with the ability to play at Shannon Lake we will be able to demonstrate to the city that there is a big demand for courts and that the way courts are allocated should be reviewed. Keep in mind that if court usage at Shannon Lake doesn’t increase on the days that we have been provided, our argument won’t be very effective. 

As we have already mentioned we will be bringing forward the topic of court allocation at Shannon Lake after the season is over. What we have learned is that the city listens to people who make their opinion known so….  if  you would like to contact the city and express your opinion you can do so by contacting:

recreation@westkelownacity.ca and/or by phoning 778-797-8800

We will conclude with a repeat reminder that if you want to play during club times with your nonmember friends you are to book and play at the Shannon Lake courts. There will be no charge to your friends plus you keep the Mount Boucherie courts available for members.