Starting a pickleball club at your school
Why should I start a pickleball club?
UHSPA’s vision is to help pickleball become a sanctioned sport in Utah. In order for this to happen, 30% of UHSAA member schools need to have pickleball as a sponsored emerging sport. This equates to approximately 50 High Schools in Utah. UHSPA would love to see every High School in Utah with a pickleball club, and we are here to help you know how to start one.
Our goal is to get as many High Schools set up with pickleball clubs as possible by the Spring 2025 season, so that they will qualify during the UHSAA sanctioning process next fall.
Should I still start a club if our school is too far away to compete or if the 32 team slots are filled?
Absolutely! For this initial year, we only have the capacity for a 24-team league and State Championship, but in future years once pickleball is sanctioned, we envision that the sport will be played just like any other high school sport, region to region, culminating in the State Championship. We need every High School in Utah to form a club even if you didn’t make the 24-team cutoff, or you are too far away to be able to compete, so that you can help us achieve the goal of helping pickleball get sanctioned in Utah, and so your students get a chance to be a part of a Pickleball Club.
How should I start a club?
Here are some steps to starting a club at your school:
Step 1:
Student/parent checks with school administration on the school’s requirements needed to set up a club. There may be an application. Signups for the club should be open to all students.
Step 2:
Most schools require an adult advisor on board. This is usually a teacher with a background check, but some schools allow a parent to be the advisor instead. The kids cannot run the club themselves, although it should be a student-led club, and students should lead out in leadership positions, recruiting other students, helping lead practices, helping design uniforms, choosing suitable practice times etc.
Step 3:
Set up a GroupMe or similar communication method to communicate with both students and parents about practices and youth tournaments.
Step 4:
If your Club wants to compete in the UHSPA competitive league (see Step 5 below), have the faculty/parent advisor run tryouts for upcoming youth tournaments to form a team comprised of the strongest players. Youth from Junior High schools or homeschool youth of Jr. High or High School age living in the same High School boundary are allowed and should be encouraged to try out for the team.
Step 5:
The UHSPA registration for our 6-week competitive league and State Championships will be opening on January 10th, 2024. If you have a high school club in place by this time, and would like your school to participate, please go to the registration page here. We can’t wait to see you in March.
Step 6:
To help with the sanctioning process, the UHSAA will be collecting data from each participating High School in Fall 2025. The Utah High School Pickleball Association is eager to facilitate the sanctioning process, so we have come up with a chart that advisors can use to collect data, which will be relayed to school administration and to the sanctioning body UHSAA. Please see this chart here and feel free to download and use it for your school. This report will need to be filled out to help sanction pickleball. Please update monthly, starting in January 2025.
More Information
Click here to see a list of the Utah High schools that currently have a Pickleball club, with their advisor contact info and what day and where they practice.