“I got beat by an 85-year-old lady with two knee braces. Oh yeah!”
The game that Mikhail Williams, 38, is referencing isn’t golf or chess—it’s pickleball. A paddle sport that he describes as the “baby” of tennis and table tennis, pickleball is a growing sport that happens on a badminton-sized court with a slightly lower net.
Sanderford Road Park in Raleigh is one of the over 85 pickleball facilities in the region and acts as the home base for the Philippine Pickleball Club, which Williams co-founded alongside friends in August 2024. At the time, he had yet to play a single game.
Introduced to the game at his previous job at Lifetime Fitness, when the gym converted its basketball courts to pickleball courts, Williams—who now works as an assistant property manager—despised the change until his wife encouraged him to join a match. Since then, he’s been hooked.
“I started playing the moment I held my first paddle,” he said, “and it’s become some sort of an obsession.”
Williams’ sentiment is one shared by millions across the United States. With pickleball becoming the fastest-growing sport in the country between 2022 and 2025, he attributes its popularity to its two defining factors: its inclusivity and community.
An older woman with fractured knees beating a sound Williams is the prime example of the sport’s first aspect. “ It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid, doesn’t matter if you’re middle-aged like myself, doesn’t matter if you’re a little bit advanced in age,” he said, “you can still play, and you still have a chance to be good.”
The Philippine Pickleball Club embraces this philosophy. Around 50-70 attendees show up at meetups, according to Williams, with players spanning a diverse range of ages, experiences, and racial backgrounds—the club is “not only for Filipinos,” Williams said. Nevertheless, there is a certain hospitable, social vibe to the club, which Williams said makes it uniquely Filipino.
What does this look like in practice? Tonight, I’ve come to the club’s second-year anniversary potluck, so Williams encourages me to see the vibe for myself, where there’s an abundance of Filipino foods and karaoke tunes. Many practices, he says, are social get-togethers more so than intense training.
Dishes like chicken adobo and buko pandan have as much of a presence at practices as balls and paddles—a testament to the way practices are often held in conjunction with celebrations like birthday parties or anniversaries. Other affinity-based pickleball groups like Black Girl Magic Pickleball are proliferating across the Triangle with a similar purpose—to build community on the premise of pickleball.
“Everybody that starts pickleball usually starts because of the social aspect of it,” Williams said.
Still, some players join for competitive purposes, training for tournaments like the Veolia Pickleball National Championships in Cary.
“I started [playing pickleball] socially, and it became more and more competitive,” Williams said. “I did my first tournament in a month after I started playing. I don’t even know what I was doing, but here we are.”
To Williams, clubs like this act as pathways for Filipinos to connect with their culture across the Triangle.
“A lot of Filipinos, especially the ones that grew up in the Philippines that move here to the U.S., tend to stay inside the box,” he said of the over 7,400 Filipinos recorded in the Triangle in 2019. As an immigrant himself—moving from Subic Bay, Philippines, to the U.S. before college—he utilizes pickleball’s outgoing ethos to break the social stigma many Filipinos face when moving to the region.
Nourishing this community hub with a collaborative sport like pickleball is how bonds can become deeper than a teammate relationship.
“It started as a group, and then it became more of a friendship,” Williams said. “So whenever there’s fundraising events or birthdays the Philippine Pickleball Club is gonna show up, and we’re gonna be there. We’re gonna eat. We’re gonna have fun. We’re gonna be loud. We’re gonna cheer.”
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