The president of the Association of Pickleball Professionals (APP) says getting the sport into the Olympics is “not just an ambition, it’s an expectation.”
Mike Polisky was a guest of Pickleball England at the recent English Nationals in Bolton where he was seeking to develop international relations and drive pickleball’s growth outside the States.
The APP supports professional and amateur pickleball players in the US and runs the APP Tour which has a 2023 calendar of 16 competitions, plus international and collegiate series and youth events.
Olympic inclusion has been a long-term target of the APP since its inception in 2019. Whilst in Bolton, Mike told Pickleball 52 that the sport’s relentless growth will make it unignorable for host cities and the IOC when considering new sports for future Games.
“The expectation is that this is going to become an Olympic sport,” Mike told us. “We’ve seen other sports which have a similar type of mentality which have evolved and gained Olympic status, such as skateboarding, sport climbing, flag football and breakdancing.
“The responsibility now for those of us in the pickleball space is to develop and grow the sport appropriately, to work respectfully with governing bodies – which is probably the biggest challenge for us right now – and to start putting more parameters around the sport.”
Those parameters include aspects such as effective drug testing, international governance, laying down rules and regulations to maintain consistency and credibility, and a streamlined structure at professional level (which is proving somewhat tricky).
The APP supported the delivery of August’s English Open in Telford and have also assisted with tournaments in Sweden, Spain, Australia and India. Its expertise in event operations, marketing, rules and referees, tournament platforms, and support with prizes and funding has been valuable.
“We have been proactively building relationships and sharing our expertise with the international bodies, including Pickleball England,” said Mike (pictured above with Pickleball England chair Karen Mitchell and London Pickleball founder Louise Stephens). “We are four or five years ahead in the States, and if we can use our experience to lend a hand and help build the sport, then we are very happy to do that.”
Mike’s assessment is that the UK is “about level” with Australia in terms of the sport’s rate of development and growth, with India and Spain also growing quickly.
“They’re all coming!” he laughs. “It’s going to be a question of how quickly folks press on the gas. You just watch – two or three years down the road, it’s gonna be ubiquitous.”
Mike has worked in sport for the last 20 years, but he says pickleball’s explosion – with a reported 15 million Americans playing it (more than tennis, according to Apple) – has taken even him by surprise.
“I’ve never seen a sport like this before,” he says. “This thing changes people’s lives. It’s a cultural phenomenon.
“The characteristics that pickleball has are not unique, they’ve just never all been in one sport before – it’s affordable, accessible, multi-generational, social, it’s a workout and fun to watch.
“The things that separates it is it’s easy to play. It’s not easy to become great – but within 10 or 15 minutes you can have a game. You can’t do that in golf or tennis. It gives people this confidence to be able to go out there play and interact.”
PbE are grateful to the APP’s support and bringing their Next Generation ‘National’ team over to the English OPEN. We hope that we can do it again in 2024.
A few lucky players also got to try out the new OWL quiet paddle when Mike visited the English Nationals as he had a couple tucked in his ruck sack!