Over the last three years, pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in the country in part due to its social nature and its multi-generational appeal.
After playing the sport nonstop during the pandemic like so many others, Sam Hutner decided to start a pickleball club at IU in 2021 during his freshman year.
During its first two years of existence, the club was primarily used as a way for Hutner and his friends to be active and have fun on the weekends.
However, this all changed when the idea for a competitive team grew out of the recreational club last fall. This decision meant club advisor and head coach Timber Tucker needed to recruit some of the talented players already on campus. This is what led him to Gables Bagels.
While eating his usual order, a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese, Tucker sat across from then sophomore Carter Wittendorf.
Wittendorf was rated as a top pickleball player in high school, and Tucker gave him the pitch as to why he should join the team.
“I really think it was just the opportunity to get to play a lot more especially with people my own age,” Wittendorf said.
IU junior Carter Wittendorf talks about the reason he joined the competitive pickleball team.
While Tucker got Wittendorf to join the club, IU graduate student Mehvish Safdar came into the bagel shop at the same time.
Safdar played collegiate tennis at the University of Minnesota and had recently became interested in pickleball. During an online search about pickleball, she found Tucker’s name. He invited her to sit down, got her a bagel, and sold her on joining the team.
Through this meeting at Gables, Tucker secured two of the team’s best players.
After less than a month of practicing together, the team went to Michigan for a tournament and won the whole thing.
“It’s kind of crazy to think that within the course of a month, we went from nothing to winning our first tournament and getting our bid to nationals,” Wittendorf said.
The team’s hot streak did not stop there. IU Pickleball made it all the way to the 2024 Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating (DUPR) Collegiate Individual National Championships for women’s singles and mixed doubles over the summer. They won both titles through the play of Safdar and sophomore Michael Asplund.
Following their success, the team was named a top five school dominating collegiate pickleball by DUPR back in August. These achievements have made the team more popular and competitive than ever before.
“We cut some really good players,” Tucker said. “That’s crazy, a year ago we had four people on the team, and now we had 190 try out.”
This club program is now drawing the attention of prospective college students, who are considering Indiana heavily because of the pickleball team.
“There’s a guy, who I’m told is the highest-rated junior player in the world, not from the United States, he’s from Australia.” Tucker said. “And his father has reached out to me about him coming.”
Head coach Timber Tucker talks about how the pickleball program is getting the attention of some of the best junior players in the world.
As Tucker said, the combination of the 9th-ranked undergraduate program in the Kelley School of Business and the success of the pickleball program is helping the team greatly with recruiting top talent. With highly anticipated recruits in the program’s future, Tucker is optimistic about where the club program can go.
