PickleBOS Launches Female Fridays to Welcome Women of All Skill Levels

Eleven women spread across three courts at PickleBOS one recent Friday evening, singing along to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and "Dancing Queen" between rallies. That scene, tucked off Dot Ave just beyond the Dorchester line, is exactly what Nikki Yang, who leads women's programming at the club, had in mind when she helped design Female Fridays Open Play.

Launched in honor of National Women's Month, Female Fridays is a weekly two-hour, women-only open-play session at PickleBOS, the newly opened indoor pickleball club in South Boston. The format is open to women of every ability level, and the $35 fee gets players onto one of the facility's 11 Acrytech Cushion-X courts. This week's session ran from 8 to 10 p.m. and featured a format called "Queen of the Castle Ladder and the Swamp Series."

"Our priority is to carve out a safe and comfortable learning environment for the women of our PickleBOS community to have fun and to learn how to be their very best on the court, because women in pickleball often are the best on the court," Yang said. She added a sharper point: "Women's play in pickleball is unique, so women deserve a unique space for training to meet those needs."

The South Boston facility where those sessions take place is more than a court complex. The building includes event space and a bar stocked with local offerings like Dorchester Brewing Co.'s Vietnamese Coffee Stout and Punchbowl Sour. During evenings and weekends, athletes of varying ages and abilities fill the space. On Fridays, Yang wants to change the ratio considerably. "We have 11 courts," she said. "If I could fill all 11 with Female Fridays, I would love it. A full house of women? Yep. Absolutely."

Female Fridays is part of a broader programming push at PickleBOS that includes daily open plays, leagues, clinics, and social events. Founder Alex Karsos, who lives in South Boston with his wife and two children, built the club with an eye on where the sport is headed: he believes pickleball will soon be a high school and NCAA sport.

That ambition is already driving expansion. PickleBOS is set to open a second venue next month at 440 Rutherford Ave in Charlestown, adding ten more indoor courts to the operation. The Charlestown site will mirror the Southie location's full programming calendar, including open plays, leagues, clinics, and social events.

For now, the South Boston courts remain the home of Female Fridays. Details and registration are available at picklebos.com.