Cranberry Township Pickleball Association

A club, not just a set of courts

If you’ve driven into Graham Park and wondered why the pickleball courts are always full at 7am, this is why. The Cranberry Township Pickleball Association — everyone calls it CTPA — isn’t a private business and isn’t a typical Township rec program either. It’s a member-run club that operates as part of the Township’s Parks & Rec department but pays its own way: court construction, expansions, and day-to-day operating costs are covered by membership fees and fundraising rather than tax dollars, according to the club.

It got its start in 2016, when ground was broken on the first dedicated courts at the UPMC Passavant Sportsplex at Graham Park. Since then it has grown into one of the largest pickleball clubs in the region — the club itself says it believes it’s the largest in the Northeastern U.S. — with membership capped at about 1,900 players and a waitlist behind that.

The courts at Graham Park

CTPA’s home is a complex of 19 dedicated pickleball courts, the first thing you pass after the basketball and tennis courts when you enter Graham Park. These are purpose-built courts with permanent lines and nets, lights for night play, dividing fences between courts, and restrooms and water fountains right alongside.

The setup changes with the seasons. Thirteen courts are used outdoors from spring through fall. The other six sit under an inflatable air dome during the winter so members can keep playing indoors, and the dome comes down for summer. Those six courts came out of a roughly $1.7 million expansion that Township supervisors approved in early 2023, which converted the old tennis courts at the Sportsplex into pickleball courts and added the dome.

How membership works

Joining isn’t as simple as signing up online. New members are invited off the waitlist during two short enrollment windows a year — one in late September and one in March/April — and each window only stays open for about two weeks.

For the fall 2026 window, new members are being brought in for a 15-month term running October 1, 2026 through December 31, 2027. The cost is $152 for Cranberry residents and $168 for non-residents, and it includes access to the indoor dome season. The next chance to join after that is March/April 2027, at the same price.

A few things that set CTPA apart from a casual pickup scene:

• Its own rating system. CTPA places players into skill levels through its own Promotional Evaluation process and doesn’t accept outside ratings. That’s the backbone of what the club calls “level play” — matching you against people at your skill level, which it cites as the main reason experienced players join.
• Scheduled, organized play. Members book sessions through the CourtReserve app, and play runs in formats like ladders, timed up/down rotations, and “Your Four,” which lets a foursome of any rating stay on a court together until another group is waiting.
• Help for newer players. An Early Player Development program works on fundamentals like groundstrokes and serving, and also walks new members through how the scheduling system works.
• Entirely volunteer-run. Session coordinators, level coordinators, communications, and evaluations are all handled by member volunteers.

Can you play without being a member?

Yes, in two ways.

The simplest is the two free public courts at Community Park, about a mile and a half from Graham Park. They’re open to anyone with no membership or registration, unstaffed, and run on open-play rules: stack your paddle in the queue and winners stay on. The Township approved those courts in 2024 and they opened in 2025; CTPA says its members paid for them.

Non-members can also play at Graham Park itself on a pay-to-play basis, reserving a court on-site the day of or up to 24 hours in advance, subject to availability. The club says more than 3,500 non-members have played at Graham Park through various events.

Tournaments

Because of the size of the complex — 19 courts in one place, no temporary nets required — Graham Park has become a regular tournament venue. Recent events include a Mixed Split-Age Doubles one-day tournament in August 2026, which pairs one player under 50 with one 50-and-over and typically draws around 150 players, and the 2026 GAMMA Pickleball Classic, held September 19–20, 2026 in partnership with CTPA. The club’s largest regional tournament draws close to 500 players, and past events like the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship have expanded to 30 courts by adding temporary ones.

The debate over access and noise

CTPA’s success hasn’t come without friction. In 2023, residents of the nearby Westminster neighborhood started a petition asking the Township to cut court hours and add noise barriers, saying the constant pop of paddles carried into their homes from early morning into the evening. The club said it had already hired a consultant specializing in pickleball sound mitigation to study the courts.

In 2024, KDKA reported a second complaint: that courts in a public park were mostly reserved for members — many of them non-residents — while Cranberry residents who weren’t members had only limited daily access, and even residents who wanted to join faced a waitlist. CTPA co-founder and co-director Bruce Mazzoni, who was also serving as a Township supervisor at the time, described the club as a partnership with the Township that uses no tax money and is run by its volunteer members. The free public courts at Community Park were the Township’s main response.

Where to find it

The courts are at the UPMC Passavant Sportsplex at Graham Park, 260 Graham Park Drive. CTPA’s mailing address is the Cranberry Township Municipal Center, 2525 Rochester Road, Suite 600. Membership details, the waitlist, and tournament sign-ups all live on the CTPA pages of the Township’s website.