Case Study: Building Relationships through Pickleball
Laura Coulter | Content Writer at Upward Sports
Pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in the United States for the past four years. While this sport may have been associated with older adults in the past, the average age of pickleball participants has been steadily declining, and the Sports & Fitness Industry Association’s report on pickleball found that “The sport added over 1 million children under the age of 18 from 2022 to 2023.”
The growth of pickleball creates an exciting opportunity for churches that want to expand or launch their sports ministry in 2025. Upward Sports recently ran a pilot program for churches to test adding pickleball to their Upward league lineup. One of these churches was St. Peter’s United Methodist Church in Wellington, Florida, an 18-year Upward partner that runs basketball and cheerleading leagues every year.
Shelly Albright, Director of Children and Youth at St. Peter’s, already had pickleball on her mind when she learned about the opportunity to be part of Upward’s pilot program. Some of the high school students in her ministry had suggested pickleball as an activity. So, the church decided to try out the program, with Shelly and League Director Jennifer Klinkowitz jumping in to make it happen. Shelly and Jennifer weren’t familiar with the sport themselves, so they learned right alongside the kids during the first phase of the program. Everyone was patient, and they had a great time. The church is now running the second phase of the pilot program.
While they went into pickleball thinking it would primarily be a ministry for high schoolers, Shelly and her team learned that middle school was actually the best age to get the kids involved in the league. The church decided on two divisions for their second phase: grades 4-6 and 7-9.
Another important finding for St. Peter’s was that a practice-and-play format worked better for pickleball and the age group they wanted to reach. Practice-and-play has participants practice and play games on the same day, whereas a more traditional league format would have practices on one day of the week and games on another. At St. Peter’s, players are divided into teams of four that practice and work on skills together before their games begin.
While figuring out the best system for their church took some trial and error, Shelly believes pickleball is a great sport for churches to add to their sports ministry, or even to launch their sports ministry with. “It’s a manageable sport,” says Shelly. “It’s not as intensive.”
"This is a way to create discipleship. Pickleball is a super-easy one, and everybody can love it. All ages can play. So you start with the kids. You can open up to moms or dads or seniors, and have a whole other ministry.”
The number of participants per league is typically lower for pickleball than for a sport that requires larger teams, and Shelly says this has helped her and Jennifer be very relational with the kids, especially when they’ve had fewer volunteers.
Shelly and Jennifer have been very intentional about building relationships and creating an environment where kids can share their stories and be themselves. In addition to presenting the Upward devotions, they share their highs and lows with one another every practice.
“Every week we sit down and I ask them how their week was,” Shelly says. She tells them, “This is the one time that you can brag as much as you want about yourself, and we’re going to cheer for you because it’s amazing the things that you accomplish. And you can say the saddest thing or not, just hold it in your heart and you can know that we’re going to all be praying for you.”
At first, the kids were a little nervous, but once they got used to it, they never wanted to miss a week of sharing their highs and lows. “That creates relationships between all of them,” Shelly says. “And when they’re playing on the court, they know each other and they’re more likely to be kind to each other and loving to each other because they have a little bit of a basis.” Shelly loves seeing the kids cheer each other on as they’re playing. It creates a fun and positive environment for everyone, and she hopes it’s something they will take with them into other parts of their lives.
St. Peter’s has also opened up their pickleball courts for parents to play for free after practices and games. They expected parents of their pickleball players to be the ones who participated, but in the end, a totally different group of moms has been playing. Their enthusiasm has led to custom T-shirts and a name for their group: the Paparazzi Picklers Social Club. It is an unexpected way that the church is reaching even more people through pickleball.
For Shelly, the impact of pickleball has been very positive. She says, “This is a way to create discipleship. Pickleball is a super-easy one, and everybody can love it. All ages can play. So you start with the kids. You can open up to moms or dads or seniors, and have a whole other ministry.”
Shelly encourages church leaders who might be thinking about starting their own pickleball league to be intentional about recruiting volunteers. She says you can expect players of various skill levels, so it helps to have plenty of coaches who can work with players to learn and improve. Shelly also says it’s important to make it fun and, of course, relational.
“It takes three to five people in a church to reach a child, to make sure the child continues to go to church as an adult. You can’t meet all of that on a Sunday morning,” Shelly says. With an activity like pickleball, “That’s what you’re doing. You’re cementing the relationship between the child and Jesus and hopefully the church.”
Conclusion: Pickleball is an exciting and fast-growing sport that appeals to various ages and can easily create relationship-building and discipleship opportunities for churches.
Learn more about Upward Pickleball or bring this to your church – www.upward.org/pickleball
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