Teenagers in Pro Pickleball: What the Backlash Gets Wrong

A small but vocal corner of the internet wants teenagers out of pro pickleball. The problem: the best players in the sport are teenagers, and nobody can explain the actual harm.

Teenagers in pro pickleball have become the internet's favorite thing to be mad about. Scroll the comments under any Major League Pickleball clip and you will find someone insisting that kids do not belong on a pro court.

The trouble with that take is simple. The best players in the sport are, and have been, teenagers. The number one woman in the world turned pro at twelve. Half of the most feared names in MLP cannot legally rent a car.

On a recent episode of PicklePod, Zane Navratil and co-host Nico the Lefty tried to steelman the anti-teenager crowd and gave up almost immediately. What follows is the case they landed on, backed by the players actually proving it every weekend.

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Nobody Can Actually Explain the Problem

The hosts opened with the honest version of the question. "Can you make an argument that pro pickleball should not include teenagers," Navratil asked, "or do we just dunk on these people for being stupid?"

They tried the argument. It fell apart fast.

Every other major sport that gates young players does it for one reason: bodies. A fifteen year old does not belong in an NFL secondary or an NBA paint because he will get hurt. "You don't see 16-year-old basketball players or football players or even baseball players because they're not built physically enough for the game," one host put it. "But pickleball doesn't require that."

That is the whole ballgame. Pickleball has no collisions, no tackles, no 250-pound defender closing at full speed. It rewards hands, feet, feel, and nerve, and none of those wait for a growth spurt. As Navratil noted, "there's no physical contact with the other team, so I don't understand why you couldn't have a 10-year-old if you wanted to."

So what is left? Mostly a feeling. "I think it's just they don't want to see small kids," Nico said. "It bums them out." Navratil's answer to that was blunt: if watching a fourteen year old win makes you uncomfortable, "that might be a you problem, not an MLP problem."

The Best Players Have Always Been Kids

Here is the fact that ends most of these arguments before they start: teenagers in pro pickleball are not a novelty act. They are the top of the sport.

Anna Leigh Waters picked up a paddle at ten, turned pro at twelve, and became the youngest professional in the sport's history. She is now nineteen and, by broad agreement, the best female player the game has ever produced. She has stacked up more than 180 gold medals and nearly 40 triple crowns, became the first pickleball player Nike ever signed, and was named to TIME's 100 most influential people in sports. She reportedly cleared over three million dollars in a single year, most of it earned before she could vote.

She is not the exception. She is the template.

Hayden Patriquin was handed a paddle by his grandfather at thirteen and broke through as a teenager, collecting podium finishes against grown men at the sport's biggest events. Gabe Tardio came up the same way and is now one of the PPA Tour's marquee names. The hosts rattled off the rest without pausing for breath: "between Hayden, Gabe, Jorja, and Anna Leigh, and now Elsie, we have the history."

That last name is the newest proof, and Elsie Hendershot deserves her own paragraph in a minute. Jalina Ingram is climbing too. The hosts also name-checked 17 year old Will Mackinnon, whose team, the SoCal Hard Eights, drafted him 17th overall in this year's draft pushed for a top seed this season.

This is not a trickle. It is a wave of juniors signing pro contracts with the UPA, and the pipeline of thirteen and fourteen year old phenoms keeps getting deeper.

The 2026 MLP Draft Was a Teenage Takeover

If you want proof the youth wave is speeding up, look at the 2026 MLP draft, which pushed a record number of teenagers straight into starting roles.

Tama Shimabukuro is the headliner. The fifteen year old from Honolulu went ninth overall to the Utah Black Diamonds for a reported $125,000, and he is not there to hold a clipboard, locking up a three-year PPA Tour deal at fourteen, a full year ahead of his own timeline.

Kiora Kunimoto is right behind him. The 18-year-old from Hawaii's Big Island came over from tennis, where she won a state high school singles title, and the California Black Bears took her fifteenth overall. She backed the pick up immediately, taking down the number nine, six, and number two seeds at the PPA Indoor National Championships earlier this year before falling in the semis in singles.

And then there is Elsie Hendershot. The thirteen year old left-hander landed on Zane Navratil's own Chicago Slice after a big-time trade with the St. Louis Shock, which is a big part of why Navratil could barely keep a straight face trying to argue the other side. "As somebody who now has like three teenagers on this team with me," he started, before the sentence dissolved into laughter. When your own roster is the trend, it gets hard to call the trend a problem.

The through line is impossible to miss. Teenagers in pro pickleball are not sneaking onto rosters as projects. Teams are spending real money to start them right now.

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What About the NBA and NFL? Don't They Have Age Limits?

Yes, and the comparison actually helps the teenagers, because those leagues gate age for reasons pickleball does not share.

The NBA requires players to be nineteen and one year removed from high school. The NFL makes players wait three full years after high school, which is why rookies are usually at least twenty-one. Both rules exist to keep still-growing bodies out of violent, high-collision environments.

Baseball tells the more relevant story. MLB drafts players straight out of high school and has no hard age floor, and prospects keep turning pro younger. Pickleball sits closer to that model than to football, because the risk that justifies an age wall in contact sports simply is not on the court. Even the sport's crossover moments make the point: when Andre Agassi made his pro pickleball debut alongside Waters, they beat a pair of even younger teenagers to win the match.

Does Going Pro Cost a Teenager Their College Shot?

This is the one real question in the whole debate, and the hosts landed on it too. If a fourteen year old signs a pro deal, does she torch her future college eligibility?

For now, the honest answer is that there is very little to give up, because the college side of the sport is only just being built. Programs are forming at schools like UVA, and the framework for an NCAA pickleball league is still early. Nobody is turning down a Stanford scholarship today, because that scholarship does not exist yet.

The hosts reached for the obvious parallel. "LeBron James went pro right out of high school and never had the opportunity to play college basketball," Navratil said. "He seems like he's doing all right." The logic tracks. "You can always go back and get your degree," Nico added, "but who's going to go from playing pro to saying I can't play this college sport anymore because I made so much money playing pro?"

They could name only one player who went back to school: Collin Shick, who is going to Med School. The real caveat is a future one. If scholarships start flowing, a young player weighing pro money against a paid education becomes a genuine decision. That is worth watching, not worth banning anyone over.

Why This Actually Matters for the Sport

Strip away the discomfort and the anti-teenager position asks the sport to punish its most talented players for being good early.

Navratil put the absurdity plainly.

"Imagine telling somebody who's fourteen years old and good enough to do it that they just can't. Who are they supposed to go play against then?"

There is no junior tour deep enough to challenge a generational fourteen year old. Wall her off and "you'd be stunting their growth by some arbitrary number."

There is a business case here too, not just a fairness one. Every sport that matters sells its young stars. A thirteen year old beating former champions on a Sunday is exactly the kind of story that pulls new eyes to MLP and keeps them there. The teenagers are not a threat to the product. They are the product's best marketing.

The hosts closed where the evidence pointed. "Let them play if they're good enough. That should pretty much be the only rule."

Hard to argue with a rule the standings already enforce.

Frequently Asked Questions

How old do you have to be to play pro pickleball?

There is no widely publicized minimum age to compete on the pro tours or in MLP, which is why players as young as thirteen have appeared on pro rosters. Eligibility is driven by skill and draft or tour status, not by a hard age floor. [EDITOR: Verify current MLP/UPA official age policy before publish.]

Who is the youngest pro pickleball player?

Anna Leigh Waters is the most famous example, turning pro at twelve and becoming the youngest professional in the sport's history. She is now nineteen and ranked at or near the top in singles, doubles, and mixed.

Can teenagers actually make money in pro pickleball?

Yes, and some make a lot. Waters reportedly earned more than three million dollars in a year from prize money and endorsements, including deals with Nike and other major brands. Younger signed pros earn through UPA contracts, MLP salaries, and sponsorships.

Does playing pro pickleball affect college eligibility?

Today there is little formal college pickleball structure to lose, since NCAA-level play is still emerging. That could change as scholarship programs develop, which is the one part of this debate genuinely worth tracking.

Who are the top teenage pickleball players right now?

Beyond Waters, watch Hayden Patriquin and Gabe Tardio, who both broke through as teens, plus the 2026 MLP draft class: fifteen year old Tama Shimabukuro, eighteen year old Kiora Kunimoto, and thirteen year old Elsie Hendershot. Expect that list to keep growing.

The Bottom Line

The teenagers in pro pickleball are not ruining the sport. They are the reason it keeps producing must-watch moments, and the online outrage has yet to name a single concrete harm.

If you want the arguments and the receipts firsthand, watch the full PicklePod episode, then grab our free newsletter so you catch the next teen phenom before the comment section does.