Florida Atlantic Owls Win 2026 U.S. Collegiate Pickleball Championship Over Utah Tech

Florida Atlantic University's club pickleball team did something no Owls squad had done before: win an APP collegiate national championship. Bella Nelson, Jayden Broderick, Gianna Jarman, and Alec LaMacchio defeated Utah Tech University three games to one in the championship final of the 2026 APP Selkirk U.S. Collegiate Championships, held March 6–8 at The Courts in Cape Coral, Florida.

The title came at the end of a 40-team field assembled through seven regional qualifier events staged throughout 2025 and early 2026, with $50,000 in total prize money at stake. The field included defending champions the University of Florida, 2024 champions Utah Tech, and programs from Indiana, Purdue, Virginia, Grand Canyon, UConn, and several other Sunshine State schools: Florida State, Miami, UCF, and USF.

The championship final was decided across men's doubles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles matches. In men's doubles, Broderick and LaMacchio had a notable path to the final: the two FAU teammates had faced each other in the men's singles final before pairing up for doubles. They dispatched the University of Texas duo of Jack Munro and Eli Trumeter 4-11, 11-7, 11-9. That win handed LaMacchio his third individual national title of the tournament.

The women's doubles final was an all-Utah Tech affair for the second straight year. Lauren Mercado and Mary Monson beat their own schoolmates Ella Boydston and Ashlee Searle 11-8, 11-7 to claim the title, with Texas's Victoria Falk and Erin Johnsen finishing third.

The tournament is the centerpiece of the APP Tour's collegiate initiative, a structure built in partnership with NIRSA, Selkirk, and USA Pickleball specifically to grow competitive pickleball on college campuses. The regional qualification model, now producing a 40-team national field, reflects how quickly the collegiate side of the game has expanded: programs from across the country, not just traditional hotbeds, are earning spots at the national table.

For FAU, a Boca Raton school not typically associated with national championship hardware, the win in Cape Coral marks a significant moment in the program's short competitive history and a concrete data point in collegiate pickleball's upward trajectory.