Southern Pickleball Championship underway in Macon
"To see that vision validated in this way with a tournament of this size is, yeah, it's tremendously gratifying," said General Manager of Rhythm & Rally John Roberts.
MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Over 1,200 players from across 21 states are battling it out at the Southern Pickleball Championship at Rhythm & Rally Sports & Events as Georgia’s largest Amateur Pickleball Tournament in history has begun right here in Macon.
The tournament, hosted by the Southern Pickleball Association, who also hosted the Candy Cane Classic last month, has become so big that they had to literally turn players away because they reached capacity.
“Oh, we’re super excited about the turnout. This is the most we’ve ever seen, 1200 people, and we love the small tournaments, we love the big tournaments, we love them all. We get to meet lots of great people every time. New ones, old friends come from far and wide. So we love it. We love all of our tournaments,” said Lara Schu, Director of Operations for Southern Pickleball. “We started Southern Pickleball back in 2021. Started in Georgia, assisting local parks and recreations doing pickleball programming and we started doing tournaments. Now we’ve grown to all ten southern states and we operate tournaments all over and we travel a whole lot.”
“You know, anytime you can get this many people to come to your locality to shop in your shops, eat your restaurants, sleep in your hotels, you’ve got an event that’s doing some good for the community,” said John Roberts, General Manager of Rhythm & Rally. “They saw that there was still a hunger in the community and that they could continue to maximize the value of the sport.”
“To see that vision validated in this way with a tournament of this size is, yeah, it’s tremendously gratifying,” he said. “It’s a testament to Mayor Miller, Gary Wheat at Visit Macon, Alex Morrison from the Urban Development Authority. They were the ones who really had the vision and drove this. I’m fortunate enough to be a steward of that vision and to see it.”
“I don’t think that we’ve reached the fruition. Even still, even at 1200, I think, you know, there’s still room to grow. We can do more. We can make it bigger and better and we’ll continue trying to do that,” said Roberts.
Singles events are being held today, doubles will take place tomorrow and mixed doubles will take place on Sunday.
