An inter-college pickleball tournament was held June 19, 2024. Teams from URI’s College of Engineering, College of the Environment and Life Sciences and Graduate School of Oceanography participated in a friendly competition at the URI tennis courts.
Each college team consisted of 12 players that consisted of faculty, staff, students and special guest players including spouses.
For the first part of the tournament, teams were formed into six doubles on the spot, fostering great friendships between players. The teams were paired with those of the same rank against each other. The winner of each match earned a point for their college.
The second part of the tournament saw men’s and women’s doubles in an elimination format. Tao Wei and Jillian Cai, the tourney scorekeepers, made the less-prepared on-site pair formation possible. Pre-registration in the future will be considered for better seeding.
Results
Men’s Double Champions: COE (Ken Q Yang and Leon Ye)
Women’s Double Champions: CELS (Jessica Leighton and Kaeley Skakalski)
An award ceremony followed where champions received a specially designed pickleball paddle with both functional and collectible value with a custom design created by Dr. Yan Sun.
Mary Parlange, who conceived the idea of the inter-college pickleball tournaments and played in the first double for the COE team, presented the first-place trophy to the CLES team.
College of Engineering team captain Dr. Ken Q Yang, a key organizer of the tournament, presented the prize to the women’s doubles champions.
John P. Walsh and Gongqin Sun, GSO and CELS captains respectively, were instrumental to this tournament. “Without their efforts and organization of their teams, we would not have had this tournament,” said Qing Yang.
COE Dean Anthony Marchese presented the prize to the men’s doubles champions. From here, these tournaments anticipate to grow and incorporate more teams from the university.