The highly successful inter-club format of Pickleball England’s South East Pickleball League is well on the way to being rolled out across other regions of England.
South East Pickleball League, which has been running since 2022, currently has 32 teams from Berkshire, Hampshire, West Sussex and south London playing once a month at David Lloyd in Woking.
The 32 teams play in eight divisions with four teams in each. On a matchday, the four teams play each other in a round-robin format, with men’s, women’s and mixed doubles matches. The team finishing top is promoted and the bottom team relegated. With promotion and demotion decided on the day, it can make for some exciting drama.
This year, there have been nine rounds which last just one day each (the top four divisions play from 9am-1pm and the bottom four 1pm-5pm, or vice versa).
Andre Strachan from Aldershot & Farnham Pickleball Club, who organises the league with Lou Stephens from London Pickleball, told us: “In that half a day’s competition, you get so much pickleball you’re struggling to walk afterwards! But the beauty of it is it only takes up half your Sunday.”
Clubs can enter up to three teams into the league and each team is permitted a squad of between four and eight players. Andre explains: “You can mix and match which players you want to play in particular teams. You can either bring eight players and have fresh legs, or just bring four and have consistency and run the risk of an injury. It’s entirely up to each team how they want to strategise that.”
Word of the league’s success has spread and other regions are now looking to adopt the format. Kent and East Sussex are looking to form their own league and are scoping out potential venues.
Clubs in Hampshire, Gloucestershire and Dorset are also forming their own league which will initially spread over quite a big geographical area and may yet be broken down into smaller regions in time. There have also been expressions of interest from Manchester and Cumbria and Andre has provided rules, templates, advice and support.
Andre explains: “The vision is that across the country we have regional leagues where everyone is running the same event format. We might even have a multi-regional competition and the winners of those would enter into a de facto national finals.
“The appetite for it is massive. It’s so exciting to benchmark yourself against other clubs because you get used to playing in your own bubble. You think you’re really developing, then you put yourself against another team and it gives you a lot more to think about. It’s great to build your strength-in-depth and it gives you new purpose as a player and as a pickleball club.”
