CNMI pickleball fundraiser targets world championships in Da Nang
Saipan’s pickleball federation will raise travel money for Da Nang as CNMI’s player pool swells from five in 2020 to nearly 500.
The Pickleball Federation of the Northern Mariana Islands is building its most important fundraiser yet around a simple goal: get Team CNMI to Da Nang, Vietnam, for the sport’s next world-stage test. Its 6th Anniversary Tournament, Paddle for the World Stage, will run June 26-28 at American Memorial Park and the Capital Hill pickleball courts on Saipan, with proceeds aimed at helping the island’s players reach the World Pickleball Championships.
For CNMI, the event is more than a celebration of six years of growth. The federation received an official invitation to the 2026 Pickleball World Cup in Da Nang, scheduled for Aug. 31 to Sept. 6, and the trip will demand the kind of funding small federations rarely carry alone. The tournament in Vietnam will use a Major League Pickleball format, requiring at least two men and two women per team, which means CNMI’s selection race is not just about talent but about building a balanced roster that can travel and compete on equal footing with larger programs.
That roster has become a deeper problem to solve than it would have been when pickleball first arrived on Saipan in 2020. Dr. Nelson Krum introduced the sport with five original players. By spring 2026, Krum said the local community had grown to almost 500 players. About 30 athletes had applied for World Cup selection, and the open division alone was expected to require up to three weekends of playoffs before CNMI could settle on its team.
The fundraising push also shows how Asia has become the practical center of opportunity for emerging pickleball nations and territories. The Asian Pickleball Federation has grown to 21 member countries and about 50,000 players across the region, while also training and certifying 600 referees. Its university program has expanded from three universities in 2022 to 10 universities in nine countries in 2024, with targets of 30 universities in 12 nations in 2025 and 60 universities in 18 nations in 2026.
Vietnam’s rise sits at the heart of that shift. The country was preparing for its first national pickleball championship in October 2024, and Da Nang has been selected to host the Pickleball World Cup 2026, the first global-scale pickleball event ever held in Vietnam. For CNMI, that makes the June tournament on Saipan a bridge, not an endpoint: the path from a small island court to a world championship now runs through Asia’s fastest-growing pickleball corridor.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
