Find out how Australia's fastest growing sport is being run from Wagga

However Brendan Lee is not only managing, he's excelling in his role as Pickleball Australia's executive officer.

Lee leads a quickly-expanding team at Pickleball Australia and his own journey has seen him quickly go from casual player to the most important figure in the sport in the country.

The Daily Advertiser's Jimmy Meiklejohn sat down with Lee during the week as he gave a rare insight as to how he found himself in the role and what are some of the challenges of developing and building a sport in Australia effectively from scratch.

Lee first came across Pickleball in 2020 whilst working for PCYC Queensland in Hervey Bay and he admitted that at first he didn't think of much of the sport given his status as 'tennis elitist'.

However following some convincing from the local players, Lee gave the sport a crack and soon found himself training with some top-level players in Noosa.

From there, his journey with the sport started to evolve and he travelled across Australia and Asia playing competitively with some of his highlights including qualifying for the Australian Nationals finals in 2022 and winning a doubles competition in Mumbai, India.

Lee explained that the sport's organisation body decided early last year to appoint their very first paid executive and he was fortunate enough to find himself in the role after eclipsing roughly 100 fellow applicants.

"In 2023, Pickleball Australia was completely volunteer driven at the time," Lee explained.

"It was a very operational board, working with seven state member associations and 100 affiliates underneath that and about 4000 members at the beginning of 2023.

"They finally decided it was time to appoint someone in a paid position to start to oversee the sport of Pickleball and ensure it's growth and development is being garnered to a position where they know it can.

"We've seen what Pickleball has done in the United States especially and even Canada to an extent as well.

"I put my hat in the ring essentially for the role, with my history and not just playing and being immersed in the sport myself.

"But also my sports administration background in working for PCYC and Tennis NSW and owning my own small businesses in Lismore and Casino really put me in a good position to be successful in the role.

"Undoubtedly the role was very sought after, it doesn't come by very often that you get to step into the top role of a sports organisation.

"Even though it's in its foundation stages it was very well sought after and I believe there were approximately 100 people applying for the job from all different sporting and non-sporting backgrounds.

"I was pretty honoured to essentially take out that role with Pickleball Australia and be appointed in March 2023.

"It's been one hell of a journey since then."

As the first full-time employee of Pickleball Australia, Lee was tasked with effectively trying to build the sport from scratch as he looked to establish a series of resources and policies.

In a short time his team of one has quickly grown and Lee is now part of a team of seven that continues to grow as the sport's popularity continues to rise.

Although only being in the role for 15 months, Lee explained his role has changed massively from his first days to presently.

"When I first started we put together a position description on what my role would most likely look like," he said.

"It certainly changed month after month as I started to find my feet in the role and with the growth that was occurring during those stages.

"Essentially I was one to many when I started in this role and you're trying to find your way and set up a sport essentially from scratch.

"The volunteers at the board level and state level had done a tremendous job to get us to that point of 4000 members, but there was much stability that we had to bring across the nation by development of resources and policies.

"But also creating good relationships with those on the ground because as a peak body of the sport, sometimes there's a lack of trust between those at grassroots and those at national or even a state level.

"This is something that I really wanted to distil in our organisation from the beginning is having that trust of the community on the ground.

"I guess from my role in who I was prior in being a player, coach and commentator, I had been around much of the communities around Australia so I was in a good position to succeed in that role.

"We've grown from one full-time employee to now seven employees across the board and my role has again diversified, that's all been in 15 months since I started in this role.

"We are starting to bring in people in skill portfolios in the likes of event managers and operations managers of coaching and officiating to oversee those portfolios that are really going to help us lead the sport from the top and our states and their members to really grow the sport on the ground.

"We developed a new strategic plan in the middle of last year on our vision for the next three years.

"That's going to change greatly though in a very short time as over the last 15 months we've grown from 4000 official members to just going over 12500 members.

"From a team of seven staff it's not easy to manage, but we do the best with what we have."

While the majority of their counterparts have their headquarters based in capital cities across the country, Pickleball Australia have the entirety of their staff working from home across the nation.

Although it might seem like a massive challenge to not share an office with your fellow staff members, Lee explains for them it's the only situation they've ever found as normal.

"It's just the norm for us," he said.

"We obviously saw Covid play a huge role in people transitioning from working in the office to working from home.

"I think for me when we've been appointing our team, it's been really important to try and get the right people for the right jobs that you know can obviously be trusted working from home.

"But also have the skill set and the ability to achieve when working from home, because it is quite a challenge and you can get into some really poor habits.

"Managing the team from all around the nation is just the norm for us and I don't consider it a challenge in the way that we communicate regularly and that's important.

"I guess the biggest challenge is obviously the ability to be at hand to meet with government, partners, stakeholders and like-minded organisations who are all going to be based in those metropolitan hubs.

"With this digital age and the ability to connect online it does make it a little bit easier, but it is always nice to have that connection in person as well.

"Travel is the other issue and when I need to get around it is obviously quite costly to a young organisation in its foundation years.

"I think as an organisation the board understands that we are in our foundational years and we've got a long way to go before we have the opportunity to set up our national or even state hubs.

"While our growth is tremendous and we are tracking really well with how we govern the sport, we've got a long way to go before we are going to have national or state-based facilities."

After exploding in popularity in the United States and across Europe, Pickleball is now fast picking up fans in Australia.

Lee has seen firsthand the growth of the sport in a limited time and he believes it's rapid rise is in part due to how available to sport is to people of all ages.

"In the past 15 months we've grown from 4000 to just over 12000 official members," he said.

"These are members that join their local club and their membership feeds up to a state level and then a national level.

"I know our last 1000 members between 11000 and 12000 we grew in 36 days, so the growth is occurring at a very significant rate.

"NSW is that state that is growing the fastest in the last six months and they have a really good group here at Pickleball NSW that are really driving the club development.

"I know they are working with the local Wagga group here at the moment to see what can be established in Wagga which is exciting for the community here to see where Pickleball can go.

"The beauty of our sport is that it can be played almost anywhere and they were playing Pickleball this week at the French Open on the clay there.

"The sport can pop up anywhere and pretty much as a result of it, anyone can find themselves immersed in the sport because it's so easily accessible.

"All you need is a few resources in nets, paddles, a ball and then just some chalk or masking tape to mark out that area.

"I love the sport as it's almost like backyard cricket in that it can pop up anywhere and families of multi-generations can embrace the sport in their backyard on holidays or when they are at the beach or in the country camping."

Lee has from one day in his role been driven to ensure that Pickleball is accessible for people of all ages and physical abilities.

He says one of the advantages of effectively starting a sport from scratch is the ability to navigate around boundaries that may impact other more well-established sports.

"One of our goals from the start has been to ensure that Pickleball is as inclusive as possible," he said.

"The beauty of our sport with the bio-mechanics of how the sport is made and the perimeter of the court and the type of equipment we use, makes it really accessible for those people with disabilities to immerse themselves in our sport and play with able-bodied players.

"They're not segregated to their own categories or field of events and while we do have Para-Pickleball events to find out who are our leading Para-Pickleball players.

"We also have hybrid events at tournaments where an able-bodied player plays alongside a Para-Pickleball player and it's a really unique blend in those events.

"What we love seeing is how Para-Pickleball players can turn up at a club and just immerse themselves in any recreational play opportunities.

"They don't have to form their own Para-Pickleball group to then play the sport and that's one of the other beauty's of our sport.

"Then we've just formed a partnership with Sport4All which was founded by Dylan Alcott and their job is to work with clubs across the nation to help clubs identify what they are doing well to ensure they are an inclusive club, but also what they need to do better as well.

"We are looking forward to working with Sport4All to roll that our to ensure our clubs are inclusive from the start and it's not something that we have to introduce in 10 to 20 years time as we want it to be this way and be the norm from the start.

"Trying to put the procedures in place is a really exciting challenge and it's not just putting the procedures in place.

"But also the steps in place across the nation that will hopefully lead Pickleball to being one of the greatest participation sports in Australia over the coming years.

"I truly believe we can get to that point."