Pickleball Club

A sport known only to a few just 10 years ago was propelled into the limelight by COVID-19, pickleball. As of the current day an estimated 35 million Americans played pickleball within the year. With 2023 total participation is up 84% from the previous year per SFIA reports. 

What makes pickleball so fun is the learning curve is so low. The skill and athleticism needed to play is the same for a 65 and 5-year-old.  It is an easy yet competitive way to be active and have some fun and a group of friends saw an opportunity to bring it to Northwest High School. 

Conceived during a typical talk at lunch, founders Gavin Leuck, Caleb Briggs, and Swaroop Panda were daydreaming about pickleball when the idea popped into their heads. What if we made a pickleball club? “I was talking to other students and teachers about the possibility of the club and they all loved the idea and that sparked my drive to take initiative. The reason I thought it was a good fit is because it’s a competitive sport but can also be good for beginners and newcomers,” stated Gavin Leuck.

The club found massive success in the recruitment process. In the first week of formation, the club became the largest club in the school by member count with 79 members. Some of the keys to their success were their marketing tactics to get the sign-up page everywhere they possibly could, and by having a website built by Pieter de Bruijn’s company Sitelift to make the sign-up process simpler and easier. 

One of the main problems that the founders ran into was finding the space to hold the events. Noted by Caleb Briggs, “…we had to work out plans to get the multipurpose room because the main gym was in use. It was one of the biggest hurdles we had to overcome…” The space problems were later figured out as they pushed the events outside of the school grounds to host more tournaments. 

As the club looks to the future of pickleball Swaroop commented, “Yeah so we want to start a league. We want to start a big league around high schoolers, and schools around the Iowa/Waukee area.  There are a lot of places where you can run tournaments and people can get prizes. We want to do stuff like that because that would be fun. Like having a pickleball organization… …we want pickleball to be a sport I guess.” In hopes of eventually expanding the pickleball high school landscape, the group has been in contact with various schools including Waukee in hopes of starting club programs to hopefully compete one day with the end goal of school sanctions. 

This is a story of true student passion and their drive to make their vision come to life. Look for the pickleball club to bring some good competition and see some major growth in the future.