The University of Rhode Island’s Pickleball team marked a major milestone on Sunday, November 17th, with its first match as an official club sport. The team faced off against the University of Hartford, at the URI tennis courts located next to the Boss Ice Arena. The Rams emerged victorious in the match, winning five matches to Hartford’s three. 

The team was founded in 2022 during O-week by three students who were playing pickleball in the driveway of URI President Marc Parlange. Ryan Estus, Ashley Thurston, and Bailey Bolton were the three that started it all. The club, which began as an idea shared over a casual pickleball game between three freshmen, continued to blossom into the recognized club sport that it is today. 

The Rhody Pickleball team, which practices four times a week, proved to be prepared for their match against Hartford. The competition consisted of eight total matches. The pairings for these matches were Men’s doubles A and B, Women’s doubles A and B, Mixed doubles A and B, along with Mens and Womens singles. Each pairing competes in a 3 game series with each game going to 11 points, the winning team must win by two. 

The URI Women’s A team consisted of Addison Emons and Maya Brausch who defeated the Hartford Women’s A team 11-4 and 11-1. The Mixed A team of Bailey Bolton and Tommy Mcgunnigle won both their games with a score of 11-1 earning another point for URI in the match. Chris May dominated for URI in the Men’s singles portion, winning both games with a score of 11-0. The Women’s B team consisting of Britnet LeClair and Sofia Payne also destroyed their UHart counterpart winning 11-0 and 11-1. The Mixed B team of Alex Vaughn and Kayla Deavoux, displayed dominance for the Rhody pickleball team as well, winning 11-2 and 11-0. These five wins earned URI five points in the match which was enough to take down Hartford with their three points. 

The team’s President Bailey Bolton spoke on the team’s dynamic and chemistry after the match. “The team’s dynamic each year gets better and better. Each year it kind of gets like, as the season progresses, everybody gets closer, you saw it today at the match, everyone was cheering each other on and getting into it.” said Bolton. 

With their first official Club sports match in the books, Bolton and the Pickleball team have their eyes set on accomplishing more significant milestones in their inaugural season. “This season, we’re hoping to play a DUPR tournament in the spring, and then our plans for next season are to go to more regional tournaments.” said Bolton. DUPR, which stands for Dynamic Universal Pickle Rating, is the governing body for competitive pickleball. All collegiate club programs compete under DUPR’s rulebook which can be found here. DUPR also hosts regional collegiate tournaments throughout the season and the National Championship tournament in the spring. 

Bolton was also able to share some advice for anyone interested in starting a new club sports team. “Just go for it. Our first practice we only had five people show up, and then our second practice it was 15, and then the next one was like 25-30, and then the fourth one was like over 50 and we’re all staring at each other, and we’re like, what are we doing?” said Bolton. This interest shown in the club resulted in the team hosting tryouts to get a “secured 32 man roster.”

The best moment of the season came from the match against Hartford when one of the members on the team screamed out “it’s a bad day to be a pickleball. That was pretty funny. We were joking about that,” according to Bolton. 

Campus Recreations 21st team played in its last match of the semester against UConn at home this past Sunday, November 24th. The team now looks ahead to its spring season and accomplishing more milestones!