A basketball court on the third floor of the Lerner Health and Wellness Center transforms into three pickleball courts each Thursday evening, with temporary fabric lines laid down on the court to mimic permanent markers.
Some students on the beginner courts said they have only played pickleball twice in their lives, while those on other courts play the sport competitively. Senior Parker Schwadron was among the founders of GW Pickleball, creating the club shortly after picking up the sport from his parents and launching the group in the spring of his sophomore year in 2023.
“We have a club on campus that is really doing successful, and it’s really doing hot,” Schwadron said.
The sport of pickleball was created in 1965 by former Rep. Joel Pritchard (R-WA), who was heavily inspired by badminton when forming the rules. The sport was named the fastest-growing sport in the United States over the past three years by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.
Just as the sport has grown nationwide, it has also grown in Foggy Bottom. Schwadron said that when he began the club in 2023, he limited advertisements of their practices due to the fear of too many people showing up due to the rise of popularity of pickleball as a sport.
When he founded the club, it had 80 members, with about eight to 12 people showing up consistently at weekly practice. The club now has more than 200 members registered on Engage, and its first practice of this year had more than 90 attendees, Schwadron said.
“There’s, usually this stigma where it’s like ‘Oh, pickleball is for old people’ or whatever, but honestly it is, but it isn’t at the same time,” Schwadron said. “It’s a lot of fun. Once you start to play, you start to get addicted to it.”
The club still mainly consists of open play at practices, but they now have a 12-member competitive team as well, which they formed a few weeks ago after tryouts. The team practices Thursday nights at Lerner, but they also use the tennis courts on the Mount Vernon Campus for their Saturday practices, which the competitive team members are required to attend.
When the club first started practicing on the Vern tennis courts, their executive board spent more than an hour measuring and chalking the pickleball boundary lines because they weren’t permitted by the University to lay semipermanent taped lines, members said. Schwadron said that after Walmart hosted a Sept. 14 pickleball event on the Vern court with taped lines, the staff who run the tennis courts allowed the lines to remain.
Four out of the five members on the club’s e-board are seniors, but Schwadron said he will likely pass the leadership reins to junior Lucas Golluber, who currently serves on the club’s board. Golluber organized the competitive team’s first-ever competition at George Mason University on Sunday, facing off against Gallaudet University as well as their Revolutionary rival after reaching out to schools in the area.
Golluber transferred from The New School in New York City last fall after founding the school’s pickleball club there, but he said he left before he could expand the group. He said his aunt first got him involved with pickleball a few years ago.
“It’s sort of one of those things that you play once, and you’re hooked,” Golluber said. “It’s really addicting when you play.”
On top of continuing to create more competitive opportunities as the club’s scheduler, Golluber said one of his major goals as Pickleball Club president will be to get permanent lines on courts around campus. He also said he’s had conversations with officials at Lerner about adding permanent pickleball lines to one of the basketball courts, which may be made possible when they reglaze the floors in the future.
“I’m definitely hoping to keep pushing for the permanent lines on the tennis courts at least,” Golluber said. “That is definitely just a fight we need to keep having.”
Senior board member Sabrina Causley said she started playing pickleball in Michigan, at a court behind her friends’ house during the COVID-19 pandemic. After searching for somewhere to play on campus, she found the pickleball club and joined their “lowkey” practices on the Vern last year.
She became part of the group that helped turn the organization into an official club sport, relying on her past involvement in other student organizations to lay the groundwork for GW Pickleball. Causley also said she hopes the club grows to compete in more tournaments in the D.C. area.
“I’ve done quite a few things in my time at GW, and this is definitely the most fun thing I’ve done,” Causley said. “And most rewarding thing, to be able to start something that I didn’t expect so many people would have an interest in because you don’t hear people talk about pickleball too often on campus.”
