As the professional pickleball landscape consolidates with the merger of the PPA and MLP tours, DUPR has secured a key sponsorship to further expand the sport’s college presence.
Leading pickleball equipment and apparel brand JOOLA has become the new Official Sponsor of DUPR Collegiate Pickleball, which will host 26 events this spring and fall with the Collegiate National Championships held Nov. 22-24 at Life Time Kingwood in Houston, TX.
DUPR, the pickleball ratings system that recently secured $8 million in funding to spin off from Major League Pickleball, has facilitated a significant expansion of college club pickleball participation. Since 2022, the number of athletes involved has more than doubled, reaching 365 participants across 36 schools in 2023.
DUPR hosted its first college event in 2022. It has since contributed $250,000 in scholarship money and college stipends to participating students.
DUPR CEO Tito Machado, a Spaniard who played Division II tennis at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, recalls DUPR’s first college pickleball event, held in November 2022 in the Austin suburb of Dripping Springs, TX, as “the most exciting sporting event” he’s ever been to.
“We brought [over 20] programs to Austin, Texas. We hosted them, got a hotel for them, and got buses for them,” Machado told NoVolleys. “All college kids just shouting, yelling—the energy was crazy. We had our founder [and MLP founder] Steve Kuhn throwing pizzas around, everyone loved the experience. I think that was a little bit of an ‘aha moment’, people saw how fun it was.”
DUPR Merges Male, Female College Competition
DUPR will host Individual National Championships in June, but most of its college competitions are in doubles format. Schools must have two male and two female players to form a team.
“In terms of college pickleball, we’re using the MLP-style format. Our goal was always to be the first college sport that is mixed, and hopefully we can bring that trend into the Olympics someday” Machado said. “I played college sports—there was a big distance between the male tennis team and the female tennis team. We don’t have that right now—we have a community of pickleball players that really speaks to the essence of our sport.”
Pickle Haus in Chicago hosted DUPR’s first college regional of 2024 in February followed by last week’s Utah Super Regional at The Picklr in Kaysville.
Utah has emerged as the “college pickleball mecca” Machado said, with three state universities ranking in DUPR’s latest top 10 collegiate programs.
“Ideally in the future, the more that we start seeing the infrastructure being built in college campuses, and we want [to host tournaments] in college campuses,” Machado said. “The [infrastructure] is not ready yet, the real estate is not ready yet so we’re looking at our partners within those markets.”
MLP, PPA Scouting Leverages DUPR’s College Database
“This is great for the sport. It was a celebration day at DUPR,” Machado said of the finalized MLP-PPA merger. DUPR has served as the official ratings system for both the PPA and MLP tours.
The talent at the college level is also improving. DUPR’s average rating for the 10 top players at its 2022 Collegiate National Championship was 4.7 and jumped to 5.5 in 2023. The rating for the average doubles team increased from 4.1 to 4.4.
“We work with so many of the MLP teams with the draft and how to recruit players, so we’re very excited,” Machado added. “I think this [merger] is really going to help DUPR on the consolidation at the top of the pyramid, and we’re already all the way extended at the bottom of the pyramid.”
Will the NCAA Become a Factor in Pickleball?
The NCAA has yet to show any interest in adopting pickleball as a scholarship sport—and it’s likely far down the list of priorities for an organization clinging to its amateurism model.
Dartmouth men’s basketball just became the first college athletic team to vote to join a union and the NCAA faces legal threats from the National Labor Relations Board.
College pickleball players don’t have these issues. Top players such as the University of Texas’s Jack Munro and NC State’s Collin Shick have been able to garner sponsorships while competing simultaneously in both DUPR college events and MLP and PPA events. Without NCAA involvement, there is no issue of professional play impacting college eligibility.
“With the NCAA, we’ve had a couple or organic conversations that have come through,” Machado said. “Ultimately what we want is to be able to offer pickleball opportunities on campuses nationwide. If at some point the NCAA wants to come in and take over the sport and help with scholarship and all of their infrastructure consent that will be great.”
