Spokane Badgers prepare for first official pickleball tournament this Saturday

Spokane’s first official pickleball tournament became more than a Saturday matchup with Bellevue. It served as a market test for whether a city the size of Spokane can support a semi-pro team, draw visiting players downtown, and keep enough local energy around the sport to make the whole setup feel permanent.

The Spokane Badgers entered the event with a 10-player roster and the backing of the Ultimate Pickleball League, which launched in October 2025 as a year-round, city-based semi-pro circuit for players rated from 4.0 to 5.49. That rating band matters. It sits in the space where strong amateurs want structure, travel, and team identity without stepping fully into the pro ranks. The league says it has 77 cities claimed and counting, while the Badgers’ own site puts the nationwide total at more than 75 teams, a scale that makes Spokane look less like an outlier and more like one stop in a growing map of regional squads.

The Badgers’ home court is Press Pickleball Club, the downtown venue KREM described as the team’s Badger Den and a place that is packed on most days. That built-in facility identity gives Spokane something many emerging pickleball markets do not have: a recognizable base where fans can follow a team instead of a random bracket. Saturday’s opponent, the Bellevue Ballers, also fit the league’s city-versus-city structure, and the UPL’s official calendar already showed Northwest Region play on April 18, including Vancouver Tridents against Bellevue, reinforcing that Spokane was stepping into an active schedule, not a one-off exhibition.

Chris Allen, who also runs Press Pickleball Club, co-founded the team after seeing a need for more competition above recreational play while keeping the sport local and community-oriented. Tanner Ritchie helped choose the badger mascot, giving the team a sharper identity before the first serve. The roster also includes players such as Anneke Dekraker, Payton Romey, and James Story, who has already been coaching kids through his ministry group. That youth angle matters as much as the standings, because the Badgers have said they want to support free clinics and local outreach as the season develops.

The league’s match format, which uses five games, adds to the sense that this is a true team product rather than a standard tournament stop. Spokane’s own site describes the Badgers as a powerful presence in the Northwest Region with a grind-it-out style, and that language fits the larger bet on the city itself. If the crowds, the club atmosphere, and the regional travel all hold, Spokane could become more than a curiosity. It could become proof that semi-pro pickleball has room to grow beyond the biggest markets.