Chelsea Bachman, Isabel Laroque win bronze at US Open pickleball championships

Chelsea Bachman and Isabel Laroque turned a bronze-medal finish into a sign that junior pickleball is already pushing into the sport’s biggest amateur stages. The pair earned third place in the Women’s Doubles 3.5 Double Elimination 9-29 bracket at the 10th Franklin US Open Pickleball Championships, a result that carried weight well beyond the medal itself.

The setting mattered. They competed at the US Open National Pickleball Center, where the scale and visibility of the event put junior players in the same arena as some of the sport’s most established amateur competitors. In a double-elimination bracket, bronze does not come easy. It means surviving pressure, adjusting between matches and staying sharp through a format that punishes lapses. Bachman and Laroque did enough to keep advancing, and the podium finish showed they belonged in that conversation.

Their result also says something about the level of play coming up through the junior ranks. Age- and skill-specific brackets are no longer simply a place for young players to get a few matches in. At this level, they are producing medalists who can hold up inside a major national tournament environment. That matters for amateur pickleball because it shows the development path is getting clearer: train in the right environment, find regular tournament exposure and learn how to handle a larger stage before stepping into even bigger brackets.

Bachman and Laroque are already thinking that way. They hope to compete in championships and local tournaments next year, a detail that fits the broader arc of how youth pickleball is growing. The sport is no longer just about isolated results at one event. It is building toward repeat competition, stronger preparation and a steady ladder from local play to national competition.

That is the real takeaway from a bronze medal at the US Open. It was not just a junior upset or a feel-good finish. It was evidence that the next wave is arriving with tournament reps, bracket experience and the expectation that this was one stop in a longer run, not the end of it.