Many Tar Heel Sports fans fondly call UNC the “University of National Champions,” and for good reason. The varsity athletics programs have won 58 total team and individual national titles. But the university’s club level of athletics is strong too, with programs that regularly compete for, and win, championship trophies.
Last week, another UNC team picked up a title, in the first year of an organized collegiate tournament for a rising sport: pickleball.
Dozens of people gathered at center court of a facility in Dripping Springs, Texas, on November 19 as the 2022 DUPR Pickleball Collegiate National Championship was wrapping up. UNC led 2 sets to Utah Tech’s 1 and got to serve for the title – with a shot from Collin Shick clipping the back corner line to earn the victory.
UNC’s team of four, made up of Sarah Carpenter, Caitlin Lewis, Hunter Boyd and Shick, posed for photos with the trophy and $10,000 scholarship prize. The quartet has breezed through its group stage matches against Ohio State, Michigan and Grand Canyon University, as well as a semifinal match against James Madison.
In an interview with 97.9 The Hill, Carpenter said when DUPR (the Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating system) announced a collegiate tournament, the UNC club team jumped at the chance to sign up. The student organization, which has been around for more than a year on campus, held fundraising tournaments to pay for 12 members of the team to accompany the quartet who competed in Dripping Springs.
But Carpenter said the demand to play reaches far beyond that immediate group.
“We have 70 people who have paid dues and come to practice,” she said. “Our GroupMe [message chain] has like 300 people in it. So, there’s a lot of people at least interested in pickleball at the university.”
Pickleball is largely seen as the fastest growing sport in the United States. The U.S. Pickleball Association reports that after initially skewing to 55+ players, the mix of tennis, badminton and ping-pong is now steadily growing in popularity with younger players like Carpenter. Companies like DUPR are seeking to provide structure – whether that’s through rating systems for individual players, collegiate tournaments like UNC won, or professional pickleball leagues that have popped up in recent years.
Carpenter first tried the sport with her father in Stillwater, Okla. The Ph.D. student at Carolina said she remembers traveling to her home state a few years ago and learning from pickleball from a neighbor.
“That’s how everybody starts: in some regard, they know somebody who probably played at the [YMCA],” Carpenter said with a laugh. “He said ‘hey, there’s this sport called pickleball. We think you need to paint lines in the cul-de-sac so we can play this game.’”
Carpenter didn’t begin regularly playing in Chapel Hill until January 2021, when she joined the pickleball community who plays on the courts at Ephesus Park. That connection not only fueled her interest in playing with the UNC club, but also led her to have a deeper connection with the town and its residents.
Sarah Carpenter in action during the 2022 DUPR Pickleball Collegiate National Championship in Dripping Springs, Texas. (Photo via DUPR Pickleball.)
The UNC graduate student said while the national pickleball fervor is clear, she’s unsure whether it will continue to build and cement itself among the top sports in the country. But for Carpenter, and many others, the appeal is simple: it doesn’t take long to learn, it has a passionate community, and it can be flexible to one’s level of competitiveness. Carpenter said with her background in other sports – which she says she plays less and less now – she’s embraced trying to get better, but respects those who prefer casual play.
“[For] anybody with athletic ability,” she said, “it definitely becomes more of a sport rather than an activity – but it can be both, which I think is cool.”
One of the rewards for winning the collegiate title on November 19, according to Carpenter, was then playing some recreational matches with professional players at the Dripping Springs facility. She said those experiences and lessons were great – especially since the UNC club team initially missed a bus ride after its win.
“They had a bus going back and forth between the hotel and the facility,” said Carpenter. “And I think we didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves after we’d won. We chatted with our team, we took all the pictures, and then we were like, ‘now what?’ I think that throughout all of that, we missed the bus back, [and] that was kind of funny.”
While the national and collegiate pickleball landscape is still taking shape, Carpenter said the UNC club team has visions of continuing its success so far. In the short term, she said the program’s goal is to become an official club sport at UNC and to continue to work with the university on creating permanent pickleball courts. Looking ahead, Carpenter acknowledged other programs and college players will improve, but said the Tar Heels hope to be right back competing for the title again.
“Just because we won this year, I don’t think we’re very comfortable saying ‘with exactly how we are right now, we can win again next year,’” she said. “I think we all, even though we won, still feel a drive [and] want to keep improving.”
Photo via DUPR Pickleball/Major League Pickleball.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of the article incorrectly spelled Collin Shick’s name. It has since been updated.
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