Club Sports Highlight: Pickleball

First-years started a club for love of the game 

MARI OLSON / SPORTS EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

Before the Spring 2022 semester, the University of San Diego didn’t have a club pickleball team. For the love of the game, first-year students Shannon Burns and Nina Pignatello took the initiative to start the club themselves. 

Pickleball is a mix of tennis, ping pong, and badminton. Played on a badminton-sized court, points can only be scored by the team that serves the ball. Usually a doubles game, the players use rackets that look like large, rectangular ping pong paddles.

Invented on Bainbridge Island, Washington, outside of Seattle, the game is named after the dog of the family who came up with the rules.  

A Kansas City native, Burns was figuring out what she wanted to get involved with on campus and was surprised the school didn’t already have a pickleball team. 

“I knew they had courts that they had lined off up on the tennis courts. So I thought I’d play tennis and then I’d do pickleball, but I realized they didn’t have an actual team,” Burns said. 

Burns herself is no stranger to pickleball. 

“In high school, one of my friends started a club pickleball team that I played on,” Burns said. “That was kind of my first introduction to pickleball, and then after that my family and I have been playing, since a couple summers ago, a lot during COVID because we could be outside.”

Burns’ sporting history is similar to pickleball, so it was natural for her to pick up the sport. 

“I’ve played tennis for my whole life, and I feel like pickleball is kind of similar to that, a racket sport, and it’s just really fast-paced and fun,” Burns continued. 

When Burns arrived at USD and there was no pickleball team, she decided that the best option was to start a club pickleball team herself. She went to the Campus Recreation officer to get the process started, and realized that she needed to have someone else to co-found the club with her. 

“I met this girl named Nina Pignatello, she’s my partner for the club, and so we started it together because we figured out that we both love pickleball and we wanted to get something going,” Burns said. 

Pignatello and Burns spent last semester getting the groundwork laid out for Club Pickleball to exist at USD. They went through the paperwork with Campus Recreation and started promoting their new club to their friends. 

“We talked about it last semester and then this semester we’ve had our first practices,” Burns said. 

One of the most challenging things Burns and Pignatello faced was recruiting members for the team. 

“Right now we have about 12 members,” Burns said. “When we first started we tried to get our friends involved, but since people didn’t really know what pickleball was they were like, ‘oh, no, I don’t think I really want to do that.’ But once we were at the Alcala Bazaar it was easier to spread the information.” 

Burns explained that they didn’t hold true tryouts this semester, in an attempt to encourage people to give pickleball a chance. 

“Since we’re not a big sport that a lot of people know about, we want them to have the chance to try it, see if they like it, figure out more about it,” Burns said. 

Although they have a team now, Club Pickleball has to wait to compete against other schools as club sports have to wait three semesters after forming before they can begin competition. 

“Definitely in the future that’s something that we want to do, we want to compete, maybe travel, do all those sorts of stuff but right now we’re just getting our feet in the water,” Burns said. 

For  now, Burns is just excited to be introducing the sport of pickleball to the USD community. 

“My favorite part is probably just everyone that I’ve met and been able to teach pickleball, because I love pickleball and having the opportunity to play at least once a week is really fun for me,” Burns emphasized. “I feel like I’m friends with everybody on the team and they’re having fun, and it’s just a good stress reliever. It’s good for exercise, and it’s just really fun.” 

Club Pickleball practices once a week at the Sports Center tennis courts from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesdays.