Pickleball is on the rise at Carolina

With the sport of pickleball gaining rapid popularity worldwide, Carolina students can get a taste of the sport on campus with the club pickleball team.

Started in 2021, club pickleball at Carolina is made up of two teams. One is a social team, players with different levels of experience who just want to have fun. The other is the competitive team, which holds tryouts the first few weeks of each semester and has a roster of about 30 to 35 players.

(Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The competitive team sends 12 to 16 players to tournaments each semester, where they play teams along the East Coast like Duke University, NC State University, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Clemson University, Florida State University, University of Maryland, Penn State and Villanova University.

In 2022, the team competed in the first Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating Collegiate National Championship and won against Utah Tech University.

“The sport has grown so much. We got a lot of attention by winning the first one, but every school that competed got some looks,” said Scott Gilliam ’25, former club pickleball president. “Pickleball in general extended to the collegiate world for the first time that year, and it was an instant success.”

(Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Since then, the Carolina team was a runner-up in the 2023 tournament and a semifinalist in 2024. The national tournament has grown to 64 teams in the bracket, similar to a college basketball tournament bracket.

“Club pickleball opened up a lot of doors for me while I was at UNC,” Gilliam said. “Just sticking around in the group chat and staying interested is probably the reason why I’m still playing and was the president.”

Another avenue the team has tapped into is sponsorships, giving players an extra incentive to join. The team has electrolyte, energy, shoe and paddle sponsors. Every sponsorship is different, but some sponsors send merchandise to the club for their players. The club will showcase the products they get, free or highly discounted, and post on their Instagram for followers to see.

While they’ve had success on the court, they’ve also grown as a community each year.

(Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

“Pickleball has gone from an incredibly small part of my life to being really the biggest part of my life outside of my work,” said current president Mihir Upadhye, a third-year doctoral candidate with the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “I love the social aspect of it. Everyone on the team is so kind and funny, everyone gets along, and we have a very happy team.”

Upadhye and Gilliam, his predecessor as club president, became close friends through club pickleball.

“We travel all the time and spend a lot of time together,” said Gilliam. “I had other commitments outside of pickleball that I dedicated my time to, and having an outlet where I’m with a lot of friends and getting some exercise relieves my stress.”