Mike Nealy, CEO of USA Pickleball, shares insights on the sport’s rapid growth and the challenges of managing the national governing body. To keep up with the sport’s rapid growth, USA Pickleball has expanded from a volunteer-run organization to having 35 full-time employees. USA Pickleball aims to support overall development, including expanding its membership base, promoting the sport in schools and youth camps, and developing new membership structures. With host Rico Figliolini
Resources: USA Pickleball
Website: https://usapickleball.org/
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Pickleball’s Growth and Governing Body
00:02:46 – From Hockey to Pickleball
00:07:12 – From Recreational to Governing Pickleball
00:09:43 – Navigating Grassroots and Professional Pickleball Growth
00:12:41 – Pickleball’s Organizational Growth and Expansion Plans
00:17:14 – Pickleball’s Explosive Growth and Demographic Shift
00:21:24 – Dropping Median Age in Competitive Sport
00:22:48 – Pickleball’s Recreational Popularity and Technological Challenges
00:26:10 – Pickleball’s National Tournament Qualifying System
00:29:05 – Clarifying the Path to Nationals
00:31:42 – Pickleball’s Consolidation and Olympic Potential
00:33:42 – Spread the Pickleball Passion
00:36:16 – Family Pickleball
Podcast Transcript:
Rigo Figliolini 0:00:01
Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Pickleball Grit, based out of Peachtree Corners Georgia here in just north of Atlanta. Really great weather today. It’s going to get hot this weekend. I have a great guest here, though, probably in a hotter place than I am, maybe. Hey, Mike. This is Mike Nealy from USA Pickleball. How is the weather out there? You’re in Arizona, I think.
Mike Nealy 0:00:26
Yeah, I’m coming to you from Scottsdale here. And yeah, we’re known to have our heat about this time of the year. It’s been, it’s gotten, well, I think we hit 112 the other day, but as we like to say here, dry heat, of course, but it’s still going down enough at night. It’s tolerable. But yeah, we know the heat’s here and we deal with it.
Rigo Figliolini 0:00:47
That’s funny. Yeah, we don’t have dry heat. It was very humid, but at least we don’t have the weather down in Florida. We’re not getting floods at this point, so I think we’re good, but we’re both capable of having good enough weather.
Mike Nealy 0:00:58
We’re playing pickleball, I’ll tell you that.
Rigo Figliolini 0:01:02
Yes, we are. And it’s a growing sport here in Atlanta. So I’m glad to have you on with us to talk a bit about, you know, you just a year ago, June 15, we’re right on the mark, you became CEO of USA Pickleball, which was actually, up until I got involved, I didn’t realize how old the organization is, which goes back 40 years, because most people, I think, think pickleball is like a young sport, like not a young person sport, but a young sport being like 15 years, 20 years big. This association goes back to, was it 1980? 1984?
Mike Nealy 0:01:42
I think you said 1884. I wouldn’t say it’s 1884. Yeah, no, but you’re hit a couple things. I mean, both, you know, people don’t know that, but the sport was invented in ‘65, so the sport itself goes way back. But yeah, the initial organization, as far as the governing body attempt at the organization does go back to ‘84. Technically, our current organization, which was kind of came in from that was, you know, more in the early two thousands. But a lot has happened, and especially in the recent years, as everybody’s probably noticed, that pickleball has expanded, exploded much more recently, and it’s growing for a reason.
Rigo Figliolini 0:02:28
Yeah. And it needs someone to guide it, if you will, that’s experiencing growth in this to bring this further along, because obviously pickleball was more of a recreational sport for quite a while, even with the governing body. Right. Very different. But your background comes from the Fiesta bowl, from hockey. Can you tell us a little bit about that, where you’ve come from and how you came to where you are?
Mike Nealy 0:02:54
Yeah, you don’t know how far back we want to go. I found myself in the world of sports some years ago into the hockey side up in Minnesota originally. But yeah, I spent many years in the NHL, in the franchise organizations, and ultimately being the president of the local Phoenix Coyotes, which became the Arizona Coyotes, which now unfortunately are the Utah something. So that has moved on. But years back, though, I made a transition into the collegiate football side and local here with a Fiesta bowl, which many people, if you follow collegiate football, you know, one of the main recently new year, six games, putting on national events for a high end college bowl process. So managing, you know, through those entities, and I was, I don’t know if you could say either fortunate or, or unfortunate. There were some, some big issues having to deal with, you know, in some of my career, dealing with some things, and maybe that prepared me to come into yet another avenue of sport. This is a little bit, this is quite a bit different, actually. We can get into some of that, but my background, I think, prepared me for some of the chaos that pickleball is going through right now. And I’ll say chaos. I don’t mean that as a negative word, but we’re just growing so fast and so many things are happening. It’s, you know, where do you attention to and there’s so many opportunities and there’s a lot of different players, if you will, in the space and as a governing body, you know, we’re trying to do what we feel is most important to support the sport.
Rigo Figliolini 0:04:28
Yeah. Which, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, obviously, you were credited with bring Fiesta bowl to where it went. It wasn’t as good as it was. Right is what I ended up. So being able to do that, almost coming from that background into this. And you’re right. I mean, the sport is growing phenomenal. You have business interests, all sorts of companies coming into this space, and that could be overwhelming to an organization even because everyone wants a piece of the pie. They want a big piece of the pie and stuff. So what are the challenges that you, when you first stepped into it, what are the challenges that you thought you saw that maybe weren’t real challenges at the time and you found out more as you got into it?
Mike Nealy 0:05:18
Well, I think as you kind of referenced, this game grew so fast and really it hit, you know, a hockey stick growth, you know, and continues to be as an organization. It wasn’t that long ago this organization was operated by volunteers and almost strictly volunteers, you know, the volunteer board. I think it’s not till 2012 where the first paid employee came on board and grew into. Now we have 35 full time employees right now. So that gives you a sense that. But five years ago there, I think there was, you know, maybe seven or eight. So challenges coming in as this organization and the needs to deliver what we want to deliver. There were a lot of just blocking, tackle, things that were initially with, you know, just system, you know, from financial systems and just your traditional structures of an organization that needed to get up to speed because it’s grew so, so fast. So for us able just to be doing some of the internal work that we need to do was, it was a big task in itself, but as the, as it grew and thank goodness, I think, well, honestly, thank goodness. But COVID was a big driver, I think of people being able to, you know, get outside and play something and this sport took advantage of that. Or, you know, people took advantage of being able to play pickleball and got exposed to it. I’m a firm believer if you get exposed to this game, you start playing it, you’re gonna fall in love with it. And, you know, I wouldn’t take any credit for some master marketing plan for growing the sport. I think people exposed to it and it’s growing pretty organically, you know, but also credit to, you know, those professional tours that popped up and the league, the MLP leagues that popped up years back that gave a lot of attention, I think maybe nationally to, you know, people say, okay, what is going on with this? Maybe I need to check this out. And I would say I put myself in that list where I knew about the game. I hadn’t played it. You know, this goes back a couple of years. I finally had a friend and his wife that dragged me out myself, my wife out and got exposed to it and realized, hey, this is a pretty fun game. And then I started playing it with some consistency and then this opportunity came along a year ago and here I am.
Rigo Figliolini 0:07:31
Wow. I mean, that’s, yeah, they gotta be a different feeling when you’re playing it and it’s just a recreational thing for you. And now all of a sudden you’re, you’re running the, the organization that is the organization for the sport. You guys set standards too, I think, right? I mean, there’s, there’s balls that have to be a certain way. I mean, it’s probably been a wild, wild west to some degree in some places, I bet, with rat, with paddles and all that. So is that part of what the, what the organization does to set some standards along those lines?
Mike Nealy 0:08:05
Absolutely. And then maybe for the listeners, I mean, you know, as a governing body and as far as it changed, I mean, I came from a, you know, actually from a team situation to running vent for teams, but, you know, we are, this is a governing body situation. So, yeah, very important is the, you know, setting this, the rules, the standards, equipment standards, testing and certifying equipment, you know, to make sure that there’s some consistency, consistency, safety, all things. And they had a good, good start with that, you know, as far as the process and sanctioning, you know, those panels, for instance. And, you know, you may be surprised or people might be surprised. I think there might be 1600 manufacturers right now that are out there listed making paddles. So it’s not slowing down. So that’s a big part of what we do as an organization is to make sure that those paddles go through a testing process that are certified to make sure that they’re consistent and ready for certification and for sanctioned play.
Rigo Figliolini 0:09:10
Right, right. I mean, it’s one thing using pedals for recreational play, you know, that’s, that’s fine. But yes, when you talk about sanction play, tournaments and such and, you know, Shopify doesn’t make it easy because anyone can go out there and go sell, man. Yeah, sure. Yes. I mean, just get a shopify card and just go a store and just go. So the growth grassroots part. Right. So that’s always tough. Right. So you have, for example, if I look at tennis here in Atlanta, in the metro area, alt is big, right? They, most of its league play, it’s all league play. Right. It’s not really professional. But then you have USTA, which does the tennis open. So different organizations doing different things, handling grassroots from the local level on up to the national level. You were talking about sports coming in like EPA, Viziope and Atlanta and stuff like that. And you’re right. I mean, it just seems more of these tournaments are coming out. Do you, does USA Pickleball get involved in all of these? I mean, do they, do they, these organize organizers want to work with you all on this or are they doing their own thing as they go?
Mike Nealy 0:10:30
Sure. There’s a mix of any and all of what you just described there. Yeah. At the tournament play, I mean, you get the professional play, right in the league at the tournament play, which the PPA and APP put on tournaments or tour, you know, a tour throughout the whole year. And with professional players, our role in that is we certainly want to and work with those entities in ideally sanctioning the tournament play, working with them in other capacities as possible as a governing body. And maybe I should clarify, there’s, the growth has been great, but if you take all the tournament players, and I don’t have the exact number, but you’re talking 100,000 maybe players or so, that is really the group that are playing in a tournament base. Well, there’s, depending on who you’re talking to, there are just 14 to 30 million people that are playing this game. So this kind of gets back into our role, and I think we probably played a pretty strong relationship and focus on with the tournaments and the growth, because that was really driving a lot of growth. But we are the governing body for mostly the casual players, the recreational side. And so that’s one transitions kind of getting into what is USAP focusing on? What are we doing for growth? And part of our mission is we want to grow and support the sport. Yes, that includes supporting and working with the apps, PPA and whatnot. There’s millions of players that are out there and facilitating the growth communication materials. And we are a membership organization. So, you know, we are in a part of our business plan, if you will, is to grow our membership base. So that’s, that’s a big piece of how we fund ourselves. We are a nonprofit, you know, with the direction of growing and supporting the sport. So that’s a big piece of our focus.
Rigo Figliolini 0:12:31
So does that pardon my ignorance a little bit on this. I know, for example, USTA does the national park for Tennis. Then they have state organization, then they have a city organization. So there’s USTA Atlanta, for example. They’re running their own, I think on their own. They’re running their own pickleball league separate from the tennis park. Although the national organization doesn’t get involved, ALTA is doing its own pickleball leagues also. They’re a nonprofit organization. Do you see USA Pickleball going that route to some degree, creating localized subchapters, if you will, to run, or do you see it differently?
Mike Nealy 0:13:15
That would be down the road. I mean, tennis has been around and structured tennis and USTA been around for a much longer time, and their resources are certainly much larger than what we have at this point. Do I like to see pickleball grow to the extent where we wouldn’t necessitate being able to need regional structure to facilitate what we want to get done? I can see that for sure. Right now we’re not at that level, but growing fast and certainly on the mind, what is the best way to be delivering on our mission going forward? That certainly is on the list.
Rigo Figliolini 0:13:55
Okay. And I know organizations like, like this want to, you know, one of the big things is you want to promote the sport and get as many people involved. Do you see anything in this? You know, going down, zoning it down to schools, promoting it through schools as well? I mean, is there a game plan down the line of doing something like that, either schools or camps? Youth camps?
Mike Nealy 0:14:19
Yeah, there is. There is. And, you know, through our, our youth programming and just getting. Proliferating this game into those areas that you’re talking about a lot of discussion and plans to be pushing out the availability, instruction and growing. We’re going to work with state, high school associations, collegiate levels. There’s a lot of stuff that’s happening. It’s a little fragmented right now. I think in one hand, it’s great that more and more people are playing. You know, we’ll do what we can to make sure that we try to connect and have it, you know, structured, you know, ideally within the USAP structure and membership program. You mentioned leagues. You know, leagues is not something that we had been involved with to date, but we are going to be rolling out USA pickleball leagues as well. Also, you know, in the near term. You know, within. Within a month here, we’ll be announcing our membership structure. We’re actually changing our membership structure, expanding a little bit to be conducive, you know, both for better in approaching with the recreational players along with players that want to be competitive in a more competitive event, you know, in the touring stops and or just the tournaments, you know, tournaments themselves. A lot of tournaments have popped up and grown like crazy as well. Also as important and part of our function as well is supporting the growth of this game through the facilities. You know, we’re involved right now. There’s hundreds of millions of dollars of facilities that we’re working with in conjunction to grow the sport and growing the access to the support. That’s one of the issues that the sport has right now, is that the demand is much larger than the supply of corp spaces right now. So that is a continued nice problem to have. But a lot, of course, are coming online, but we’re still certainly far short of what we could use.
Rigo Figliolini 0:16:21
Yeah, interestingly enough, I mean, you know, you talk about franchises coming in, doing places like DLthinker where they wanted to set up twelve court somewhere, you know, just real simple, just repurpose an old warehouse, maybe resurface and put in twelve courts somewhere. And then you have places here in Atlanta, in the metro area, like pickle and social, where it’s pretty much, it’s more than 15 courts, indoors and outdoors, restaurant, other aspects to it, pro shops, where it becomes more of a, an attraction place for families to go and play and eat and all that. So, yeah, I mean, just, and even cities, I know the city, we live there, they’ve already put a study together. They want to be able to put together, I think, about 30 courts. So this way they can attract regional play here in history corners. So, so it’s an interesting growth path. There’s so many different avenues that this can go out, I guess.
Mike Nealy 0:17:23
Yeah, yeah, it’s been, it’s been a good over 200% increase just in the last few years. And again, you know, SFIA, you know, is, has published numbers every year, and they’re noting, you know, avid players, 14 million people that are playing on a consistent level. And our trajectory, we brought up tennis here before, too, that our trajectory in a couple of years to be surpassing the number of tennis players, which to me, that is unbelievable to be thinking about, you know, in a short, getting on par with the number of people that are playing tennis.
Rigo Figliolini 0:18:01
You know, I gotta believe having growing too.
Mike Nealy 0:18:04
You know, we’re just growing a lot faster right now.
Rigo Figliolini 0:18:06
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, there’s a lot more runway for you all for pickleball to be going. I mean, tennis is somewhat of a mature sport, although, you know, you’ll find tennis teams at high schools, college level, pros and all that. But pickleball has a unique aspect to it. Right. So tennis, you’re playing maybe three. You could be playing three sets. If you’re just doing league play or even just pick up play, you might be doing two sets. It’s a two hour game, maybe, depending on how you’re doing it, big four, whereas pickleball, small court, maybe a 20 minutes game, maybe. It’s one of these open play where you’re, you just do a pickup game with anyone that’s there. They’re doing that at parks here in the metro area. So you’ll have county and city parks that have dedicated or lined pickleball courts. And you could just show up if there’s an open play between, you know, that afternoon on a Saturday, show up and you could just play with anyone. Plus, you know, if you’re drinking beer, you’re swapping out players, just going, okay, jim, come on in. Your next.
Mike Nealy 0:19:10
It’s a very welcoming game, and you’re kind of, you’re describing, I think, what everybody is appealed to. You know, you get to the community court, you got instant friends, if you will. And it’s been a welcoming group of people. Come on in. And I witnessed that myself a couple years back. New guy, didn’t feel real comfortable. You kind of walk in there, hey, come on in. Let’s play. Kind of show you how to play it. It’s a very welcoming, it’s very conducive to. I mean, it’s not even necessarily, you know, gender specific. You get out there and you can play different ages and genders, and the play is, it’s more about the fun and the camaraderie. I mean, I hear tell you, I’ve heard more stories of almost life changing for people, you know, from people that were maybe sedentary but got talked into it, and they found this is something they could do, and they found a whole nother social avenue for their life. You know, that there’s stories of, you know, how it changed my life. The numbers obviously speak to themselves as far as the amount of people that are continuing to play this. And then again, we probably touched on this, too. I mean, this sport, in my perception as well, years ago, this was, you know, a game largely being played at retirement areas. Right? So it was kind of an older person’s game. And by the way, there’s, there’s still playing in masses, but the largest piece, the largest group of people that are playing right now, I think, is a 29 to 35 year old range. And so this is getting younger and younger, and I can attest to that. I have a just turned 19 year old, and he’s been playing it for a couple of years, and it’s cool now. So it’s great to see. But you know, that to that it is being, you know, it is being played at the youth level, the younger, the other generations playing it. And you are starting to see it pop into the high schools. You’re starting to see clubs at collegiate levels. And, yeah, it’s going to find its way in a little bit more structured, I believe, in those areas, for sure.
Rigo Figliolini 0:21:06
Yeah, it seems like it. The, I mean, the age, the median age, I guess, has been dropping over the last three years dramatically. I think it was 38. Now it’s 34. Just keeps dropping. I don’t know how far it can drop, but it just keeps going.
Mike Nealy 0:21:24
We were in a tournament I spent a couple weeks ago and I watched an eleven year old gal take a gold medal. It was one of our golden ticket events. That is your path to nationals and we can get into that. Talk about a little bit. But, you know, watched her beat three adults. Really. I mean, these were, you know, this is an eleven year old to get out there and so, yeah, the youth are coming.
Rigo Figliolini 0:21:48
That must have been the TikTok video I saw. Two 11 year olds took over like these 20 year old kids and just, just.
Mike Nealy 0:21:56
Destroyed them in the game. You know, Anna Lee, when she, I think she just turned 17, she’s champion for years already, right?
Rigo Figliolini 0:22:05
Yeah. Amazing. I mean, I just saw her and she was playing here for the PPA Vizio open at lifetime. Yep. And I was like, wow, just, just amazing. I mean, just the amount of people that showed up for the game. And like you said before, though, the interesting part to me was, so you had the pros there, they’re playing for a purse for money, right? You have all the vendors, you have all that. But then as I went deeper into the environment and into the area, they have all these courts in the back and you got these people, hundreds of people, because they have a lot of courts there and apparently they could put two on a court easy. If not. Yeah, two in a court. They had, I think, on each tennis court in line, but you had hundreds of people just out there playing, paying to play, to get a ribbon or some sort of thing. Says maybe, maybe they made it somewhere. But they were all enjoying themselves. Families were there, they were picnicking as we were waiting for their turn and stuff. Sure. It was a cool event.
Mike Nealy 0:23:09
Absolutely. Yeah. Those tours have done a good job of, you know, they’re also an amateur side of that. You know, that feeds a lot of that. Those events. Exciting to have the pros playing. But, you know, most people there are, are your recreational or amateur players that are playing for the fun of the game.
Rigo Figliolini 0:23:25
Yeah, yeah. And for sure, I mean, some of them that we met a YouTube content creator and he was there for that. That’s what he does. He plays pickleball, he has like 32,000 followers and he just does his thing and makes a living, I guess. Let’s talk a little bit about technology, too, right? How do you think the role of technology may help develop the game? I know there’s a lot of apps out there. There’s a lot of apps trying to get people into the game, connecting people to games and stuff. Is that something that you think? USA Pickleball will get involved in or their brands approaching you to do any of that.
Mike Nealy 0:24:05
Yeah, I mean, there’s technology plays a role in everything we do these days, of course. And I think it is helping this game as well. You know, big part of we talking about the tournaments, a big part of tournaments. You need some unique software to run these tournaments. You have a thousand people playing in multiple different matches as they happen pretty quickly, court assignments and stuff. It’s much more complicated than you would think to keep that tournament operating efficiently in utilization. So there’s a very unique software and there’s a few competitors that are out there which drives that. Also, when you’re playing competitively and even recreationally, you know, that rating, you know, so you know, who you’re playing against is important. And that’s one of the things that’s, that’s also there’s multiple ratings that are out there, too. So that that’s part of a little bit of the wild west of this sport where a lot of people got into it. There was, there was initially a rating, but then multiple ratings kind of popped in. I’d say, unfortunately, a little bit right now we have multiple ratings. So there’s not real consistency right now. And there are some shortfalls in, you know, the new, these new earlier versions of ratings. But what ideally what you want is when, you know, you want to play against likewise skilled players, ideally, you have a rating that accurately tracks that and measures the ability of players. And right now, you know, we haven’t got as much, you know, as Usaptor. You know, we do operate a handful of tournaments ourselves as feeders to our national tournament. We, there are multiple golden ticket events is what they are that you need to win a golden ticket at one of these events to advance into nationals. We run anywhere from, you know, twelve to, you know, maybe 1516 one day on how many golden tickets that we have. I’m not, as an organization, we do want to. And that’s one of the changes that I made coming in is to actually own and actually operate some of these events back to my Fiesta boat. It was a pretty big event, and we did a lot of events the year. I was fortunate enough to have some members of the Fiesta bowl event people that were looking to change their careers. And so we had the capacity to take on running events ourselves, which, you know, there’s an economic course for that, but we also, from a brand standpoint and making sure, you know, controlling the brand above the golden tickets and getting to nationals. But we also team up with other entities currently this year with the app tour and UTR sports to actually operate some of those golden ticket events under our, I’d say oversight, but conditions of the branding, things to making sure it’s a great experience for the. Mostly for the recreational players wanting and moving on to nationals, which is the goal.
Rigo Figliolini 0:27:15
Is that like a little like, you know, when we run the marathon here in Atlanta, there’s qualifying events to be able to get into that because there’s a limited space of runners that can be allowed. Is that a bit like that? Some of these. Are you looking. I mean, I know you want to run all the events yourself, or at least someone’s running it for you, but are there, could there be other qualifying events to get into that golden ticket, or does that make sense?
Mike Nealy 0:27:46
Yeah, well, the golden ticket really is the qualifying event, and I used to be, I had a few years of a running problem, and I know what you’re talking about. Qualify. The big deal was to qualify to go to. At the time, you know, Boston was the pinnacle, but you need to qualify to get there. So it’s a little bit like that, really should start with the nationals being the pinnacle event. Right. In pickleball, nationals is the goal for those competitive players that want to be at the pinnacle, including professionals, to win Nationals is a big deal. We had regional and qualifying events, and I thought it was a little confusing. When I came in, we had some diamond series things from regional sides. We had some golden tickets that fed into. It was a little bit confusing. So from a marketing or clarification this year, we tried to message a little more clearly what the golden tickets were, what it meant, and how they were that path to get to nationals specifically. You know, my goal is not to have how many people we can get to an event at nationals. It’s making sure it’s important and that you are earning your way to nationals. That was a big piece of what we were accomplishing this year. So there’s other, again, there’s other groups that are out there that you mentioned, the PPA. They are talking about a championship series, and they’re doing something that’s totally different, that is not nationals or the path to nationals, but that’s part of the Wild west. There’s a lot of options that are out there, you know, as again, back to the governing body having sanctioned tournaments. You know, we want them. They do mean something. We want them to mean something. And that was our goal, is to grow the sport and ideally in the tournament space through sanctioning.
Rigo Figliolini 0:29:43
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, to be able to do that. And this sport, even though it’s 40 years old, well, older than that. But the organization itself, right. Is 40. It’s going to still take time. Right. Because as this sport grows, where’s the pickleball tv now? There’s still a lot of growth coming on this.
Mike Nealy 0:30:06
Oh, sure, sure. The growth of the sport, these people playing it. But yeah, what comes along with that? There are a lot of financial opportunities and you’re seeing that everything from equipment manufacturers to, you mentioned, pickleball sites, you know, restaurant type of branding things. You see those are pop up to older department stores, areas that are being converted, for sure.
Rigo Figliolini 0:30:31
Yes.
Mike Nealy 0:30:31
Communities building, converting tennis and or building pickleball specific facilities because the demand is there and that growth and the money to be made in that is out there.
Rigo Figliolini 0:30:42
And you’re getting like places like lifetime fitness, which is a national fitness place with tennis and pokeball all of a sudden partnering with brands like Lululemon. So there’s also a lot of brands coming in that are not ignoring the space. So as much as you’re right there, maybe 1600 different paddles out there, at some point these things will start consolidating, I think, and things will shake out a little bit. Right?
Mike Nealy 0:31:13
Yeah, that’s a natural, I think, occurrence. You’ll see some consolidation and we’re still, probably still in the wild west stage of things, which is a good thing in many ways. And back to, as a governing body, I think it’s just important for us to stick to our mission. You know, it’s easy to get distracted and maybe, you know, chasing, you know, you know, squirrels, you know, but, you know, our core mission of growing and supporting the sport and being the governing body and ultimately, you know, I would love to see, and I would expect this sport, with its growth and international growth, we’re going to see this very likely could become an Olympic sport one day. And that would be good for the sport.
Rigo Figliolini 0:31:59
Absolutely. I could see that happening, too. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Aren’t there? So, you know, I mean, what would you say to someone that wants to get involved in pickleball, either as a player or as a supporter? What route, you know, if they’re a business owner that wants to get involved in the sport or if they’re a player that wants to, or they’re doing a, their own camps. I mean, how, what advice would you give them from your point of view?
Mike Nealy 0:32:31
Boy, there’s, there’s certainly a lot of resources. If you, if you go to our website, both on finding places to play. I mean, the easy part is as a player, you know, how do I get involved? Get yourself a racket and, you know, you don’t have to go out and spend and get the top end racket right off the bat, but get yourself hold of a racket you can find in that community. Place to play and show up is the starting point. There’s also clubs. You mentioned lifetime, but then there’s a lot of clubs that are out there. It’s something you want to get serious into. There’s a lot of places to join and immerse yourself in playing the game as often as possible. So that’s probably the starting point. Find someone, I’m sure anybody that they’re listening to this, maybe they’re already involved in pickleball in some way, but grab that friend if you’re playing, you know, grab that neighbor and grab those friends and get them out there and help them get exposed to it. But there are a lot of resources on our website as well to define where places are to play.
Rigo Figliolini 0:33:33
And that’s usapickable.org, correct?
Mike Nealy 0:33:39
Correct.
Rigo Figliolini 0:33:40
Cool. So, Mike, we’re at the tail end of our conversation today. Did we leave it? Did I leave anything out? Is there anything you’d like to share that we didn’t touch upon?
Mike Nealy 0:33:51
No. Well, I’ll tell you, I appreciate because I know what’s happening. Well, maybe I would notice as an organization we didn’t touch on. We have ambassadors, and these are people that are just excited about the sport. We have over 2200 USA pickleball ambassadors across the United States. So by boy, that’s another source. And go to our website, we can connect you with our ambassadors. And there’s a great source of knowledge and just interest in getting people involved in the game. And that’s a wonderful asset that we have out there. So there’s another resource for people. And so, and a big thank you because I think that group of ambassadors is responsible, probably. Is anything else from growing from a grassroots level, just finding people on the court playing next, maybe to people that are playing tennis, somebody that’s watching, wondering what’s going on, and then having that invite to say, hey, come in, join us. I mean, once you get somebody, I think, on the court with a, with a paddle in their hand, they’re going to get, they’re going to get sucked in. It’s the great game.
Rigo Figliolini 0:34:54
I think you’re right, because when I play tennis on the weekend and I’m a c level player, okay, there’ll be people that say, did you try pickleball? I just did that last weekend. It’s a great game and you need to be doing it, too. It’s like they want to suck you right into it. It’s amazing.
Mike Nealy 0:35:11
But there’s, you know, there’s our, and there’s, I’m looking forward to some of the studies that I’ll continue to come out on. Just the benefits of it, you know, it’s, it’s a, yeah, like anything you need to warm up and be smart about, you know, your skills and your level of your play, but it’s a little less demanding on the body. You can play it for longer times and it’s just fun social side of it. It is very appealing.
Rigo Figliolini 0:35:38
Well, you know, I just, I was excited to have the opportunity to interview you, to get to know a little bit more about USA pickleball and to know you a little better. I know you have two kids. One of them, obviously, you said before, plays and pickleball. Do both kids do that or does your wife participate? Everyone family?
Mike Nealy 0:35:59
Yeah, started with my wife and I playing. That’s where we got introduced by enough friends. And then although I found out my son was playing in middle school years earlier that I just didn’t know he had been doing that. But this is a kid, you know, he’s 19 years old. He’s a pretty competitive hockey player. Him and his hockey buddies play pickleball often as another out about something fun to do, so.
Rigo Figliolini 0:36:20
Right. Yeah.
Mike Nealy 0:36:21
And my daughter, absolutely. She plays.
Rigo Figliolini 0:36:23
All right. Cool.
Mike Nealy 0:36:26
More often than I do now because I just, I’m just kind of stuck on some time and availability of playing. So I’m jealous that they’re playing more than I am.
Rigo Figliolini 0:36:34
You get there at some point, I’m sure. We’ve been speaking to Mike Nealy from USA Pickleball. It’s been a great conversation. Mike, appreciate you being with us. Stay with me for a little bit as we sign off. But thank you. Everyone else, there’ll be links in the show notes and additional information. Certainly, you know, check out our magazine once it launches in July. It’s Atlanta Pickleball magazine, and you can go to our website and follow us on Instagram. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.
Mike Nealy 0:37:05
My pleasure.