Bermuda junior pickleball showcase caps school-to-competition pathway
More than 200 Bermuda students fed the junior pickleball pipeline, and Kai Manders, Lee Terceira and Trystan Thompson led the medal table at W.E.R. Joell.
More than 200 Bermuda students did more than pick up paddles over the past two weeks. They turned a school-season push into a junior pathway, and the payoff came at W.E.R. Joell Tennis Stadium when the Caribbean Championships Junior Pickleball Showcase finally went ahead after being knocked back from March by inclement weather.
The showcase capped the 2026 school pickleball season, which reached primary, middle and senior schools across the island through events supported by the Bermuda School Sports Federation and the Pickleball Association of Bermuda. That matters because Bermuda is no longer treating junior pickleball as a one-off introduction. The structure now runs from school play to age-group competition, with a clear line to national-team development.
The Department of Sport and Recreation helped facilitate the school championships alongside local coaches, teachers and volunteers. Its brief is not just to stage participation events, but to support high-performance athletes, junior development initiatives and recreational activity through national sport organizations and partners. That kind of backing gives the sport more than visibility. It gives it a ladder.
George Thomas, president of the Pickleball Association of Bermuda, said the program showed what happens when schools, coaches, volunteers and government work together. Gavin Manders, the association’s national director, put the next step even more plainly: build a junior national squad and prepare players to represent Bermuda at the 2027 Caribbean Championships in Jamaica and beyond. For a sport still finding its long-term shape on the island, that is the real storyline. A showcase only matters if it leads somewhere.
The performances also backed up the ambition. Lee Terceira collected four medals, including three golds, while Trystan Thompson claimed two gold medals and a silver. Eight-year-old Kai Manders was one of the day’s most striking names, finishing with four golds and a bronze while competing across multiple age divisions. Those results are not just nice hardware for a youth event. They show that Bermuda already has players learning how to win in different brackets, not just one-off school sessions.
That depth fits the broader picture. Bermuda hosted the 2026 Caribbean Pickleball Championships on home soil in March, then later added nine new players to its squad for the Pickleball World Cup in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Pickleball Association of Bermuda also sanctions national championships, commercial league play and open play, which points to a local competition structure that is starting to look organized rather than improvised.
If the school events were the entry point, the junior showcase was the proof of concept. Bermuda now has the beginnings of a feeder system, and the next test is whether it can keep enough players, coaches and competition moving in the same direction to make junior pickleball permanent.
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