The University of Wisconsin has offered club sports since 1970, when the first official Sport Clubs were organized. In 2022, UW student Taylor Chemer co-founded the Wisconsin Pickleball Club.
Chemer, his sisters Lola and Cassidy Chemer, and his roommate Nate Wiese founded the club. Chemer said he started the club “with the hopes of playing some casual games with other students on campus.”
Little did he know how far this club would take him.
The Wisconsin Pickleball Club runs both semesters, with tryouts kicking off both seasons.
“Our club is the home of competitive pickleball on campus,” Chemer said.
Tryouts are competitive as the club has a maximum of 40 members each semester, but they are open to any student at UW. This semester, the team held tryouts the week of Jan. 26 and added nine new members to the team, rounding out to 40 total members.
Team practices began immediately after tryouts, meeting twice a week for the remainder of the season at the Bakke Recreation & Wellbeing Center. During these practices, the members work through a combination of drills and compete against one another in games.
“Occasionally we have professional pickleball players come in to teach clinics where our players can learn new skills,” Chemer said.
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The club is sponsored by JOOLA, a pickleball and table tennis company. With this sponsorship, members are annually given a custom-branded uniform and JOOLA paddle, Chemer said.
During competition season, members play against both community members and other collegiate players. The team travels to Lake Geneva for numerous Minor League Pickleball tournaments throughout the season.
The club also has a partnership with the Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating, the leading organization for hosting collegiate pickleball events and tournaments. With this collaboration, the Wisconsin team can travel around the country to compete.
The team participates in DUPR’s regional tournaments, the next Midwest Invitational being held in Lake Geneva from March 8-9. The winners of these tournaments each get a bid sending them to the DUPR Collegiate National Championship.
Last fall, the squad won a wildcard bid through DUPR, which allowed them to send one team to compete in the DUPR Collegiate National Championship hosted in Dallas, Texas.
UW now sits at a 4.582 rating, ranking the team 32nd in all DUPR Collegiate teams for 2024, a major comeback from being unranked in 2023.
Starting the spring season, the team hosted their very own DUPR regional tournament.
“This semester we are hitting the ground running trying to earn a bid to the 2025 DUPR National Championship,” Chemer said.
Sending four teams to this tournament, two of them placed second and third, respectively. This did not win the bid for the DUPR nationals from this tournament.
That did not stop Wisconsin, though. The following weekend, two teams traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for another DUPR regional tournament, hoping for another shot at winning a bid to nationals.
This semester, the team also plans to send more teams to play in two other DUPR regional tournaments in Iowa and Lake Geneva.
In addition to DUPR, the Wisconsin Pickleball Club participates in Association of Pickleball Players tournaments at the collegiate level. In the fall, the club sent a team to compete in the regional qualifiers for the APP U.S. Collegiate Championship hosted in St. Charles, Missouri.
Chemer said the team performed well enough that they qualified to compete in the U.S. Collegiate Championships this spring in Cape Coral, Florida.
With the spring season well underway, the team hopes to advance their rank in DUPR rankings, as well as win another bid for the chance in the 2025 DUPR National Championship.
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“[The club] has surpassed all of our expectations and become something we never imagined it would,” Chemer said.
Chemer said he has made many new friendships and connections that would not have been made possible without the club.
“I have learned a lot about leadership, organizational development and even contract negotiation through my time with the club, which will be incredibly useful after I graduate,” Chemer said.
This opportunity has become a huge learning experience for Chemer as he was able to discover how to develop and operate a program of 40+ members through trial and error.
“Overall, this club has grown to become a huge part of my life here on campus, [and] it has been one of the greatest decisions that I have made during my time here at UW-Madison,” Chemer said.