Our method
How we verify
A directory is only worth as much as the worst number in it. So every published fact here carries a named source and the date someone checked it, and both are visible on the page rather than buried.
- On every factA named source
- Beside it, not buriedA checked date
- Where nobody has checkedA blank, not a guess
Where a fact may come from
The source ladder
We work down this list and stop at the highest tier that answers the question. A tier-1 answer makes the rest unnecessary.
- Municipal parks department. The operator of most public courts, publishing about its own facilities.
- City or state open data. Same publisher, machine-readable, so it parses cleanly and re-checks cheaply.
- YMCA and recreation centres. Operator-published, reliable on hours and fees.
- Clubs and leagues. Local players know the courts; good on lights and nets, weaker on official counts.
- The venue’s own site. Authoritative on fees, but marketing copy inflates court counts.
- Anything else. Recorded as weak, and flagged for a better source.
The lines we hold
What we refuse to do
- We never print a zero for something we do not know
“No lights” and “we have not checked the lights” are different claims, and one of them is a lie.
- We never cite another directory as a source
A competitor repeating a number does not make it true.
- An owner claiming a listing does not make it verified
A claim tells us who someone is; it is not evidence about the courts. Claimed venues get no ranking or placement advantage either.
- We do not publish a city page from fewer than three verified venues
Thin pages are how the incumbents ended up with tens of thousands of URLs and almost no readers.
In plain terms
What this build actually is
A small directory that would rather be right than big. Every venue on it is real and every fact carries the name of the organisation that published it and the date we read it. The operators are city and county parks departments, and they differ by city, and each page names its own.
What you will notice most is how much is blank. Surface, fees and opening hours are missing far more often than not, because most operators do not publish them. Those show as “Not stated”. We would rather show a hole than fill it, and where two of an operator’s own records disagree we publish the disagreement rather than quietly picking one.
The unverified tier
Since 2026-09-15, the site also shows unconfirmed listings imported from public directory data — marked Unverified everywhere they appear, on the card and on the page, and never counted in any “verified” number anywhere on the site. They have not been through the source ladder above, and their pages are not indexed by search engines. If you run one of these courts, claiming it is the fastest way to get it checked and, where the facts hold up, moved into the verified set.
Before a page ships
The six gates
Every page passes all six or it does not ship.
- Data threshold
Three or more verified venues.
- JavaScript-off render
All content, links and schema in the raw HTML.
- Schema completeness
Breadcrumbs everywhere, ItemList on city pages, and no fabricated ratings.
- Word band and specificity
Inside the band, with at least three genuinely specific sentences.
- Count consistency
Every number on the page comes from one shared query, so the title cannot disagree with the table.
- Source and freshness
A source URL and a checked date on every fact.
See it on a page
Every venue page shows its own sources
Open any venue in the directory and the source and checked date sit beside each fact. If one is wrong, the report form reaches a real inbox, and a correction is published the same way everything else is: with its source showing.