Major League Pickleball Is A Maturing League, And The Texas Ranchers Are Austin’s Fast Growing Sports Team Start-Up

AUSTIN, Texas—As the camera jib slowly descends over the main court, surrounded by the immersive video advertising boards on the side court and baseline, Major League Pickleball is, on most levels, the kind of professional experience a fan would covet from a sports league.

Rows of bleachers ascend, and white canopies with VIP seating run parallel to the court while hundreds of fans, holding battery-powered fans and wearing brim hats, dot the perimeters. A retrofitted shipping container with access to rooftop views gives owners of the Texas Ranchers premium access. Therein lies Gordie Gronkowski, the brother of famed former NFL tight end Rob Gronkowski–though other part-owners, like Tim Tebow, Scottie Scheffler, Micah Parsons, Kendra Scott, and Bobby Bones, have chosen to skip the 2025 tour stop at the Austin Pickle Ranch, the second in its history. Teams from New Jersey, Dallas, and Orlando feature catchy monikers like the 5s, the Flash, and the Squeeze.

The action begins, and you’re treated to the bangs, whoops and hollers of a racquet sport featuring athletes like 6-foot-2 Christian Alshon, a 24-year-old former NCAA Division III tennis player who whacks the brightly-colored plastic ball with a ferocity of a caged lion, and 6-foot-2 Eric Oncins, Alshon’s 23-year-old teammate and doubles partner who thrusts his fist and screams into the humid air anytime the Ranchers score a point on their opposition.

In many ways, Major League Pickleball is a fast-maturing league finding its way in a crowded landscape of sports experiences. But from a bird’s eye view, there’s no doubt the success of the league is growing, and the Central Texas-based Texas Ranchers, along with 15 other Premier League teams and six more Challenger clubs, will be key in its transformation from niche to the big-time.

Behind The People Of The Texas Ranchers

The elder statesman of the Texas Ranchers is none other than Tina Pisnik, a 44-year-old former professional tennis player from Slovenia. Her teammates call her “Mama T,” and she exhibits the kind of veteran leadership someone with a background in professional sports must maintain in a new league looking to 4x its growth year-over-year.

“If I had to say one word, I would say ‘Vet,’” said Michael Loyd, Pisnik’s 26-year-old teammate and the club’s lone Austin resident. “She’s just been there, done that. Things don’t faze her. She’s steady Eddy all the time. She’s just got that walk and look.”

On the court, what Pisnik lacks in explosiveness, she makes up for in wilyness with cagey shots and strategic hits that take her opponents to places they sometimes can’t predict. That’s not really surprising, considering Pisnik was once a top-30 ranked tennis player who operated on the women’s world tour. Pisnik’s attitude toward Pickleball is grounded by a career that’s given her perspective.

“Coming from tennis, it’s completely different and new, and it’s wild sometimes,” she says.

Pisnik turned professional in 2023 and began her contract with the Texas Ranchers in 2024. She’s a unique case, considering her professional career began in her 40s.

But life had shaped her opportunity.

A serious car accident at the age of 24 forced her exit out of professional tennis. It happened outside her own free will and in 2004 when a driver crashed into an embankment and slammed Pisnik’s passenger side door into a cement wall. She would eventually need neck surgery and two artificial disks inserted into her spinal column. While she left with her life and the ability to walk, it took four years to overcome the pain of that moment.

“I lost my identity,” she said. “I struggled with painkillers, and there was depression. I didn’t have enough money where I could sit back and relax. I had to figure out what I needed to do. It took me four long years to find myself again.”

Pisnik ultimately became a tennis coach, and for over a decade on the west coast of Florida, she thrived in an environment of 12-hour days teaching a game she still loved. As Pickleball began to make inroads into the professional sector in 2021, Pisnik played for the first time the following year.

“One of my friends didn’t have a partner,” she said. “I played, and then I got that adrenaline of being able to play points and compete again. I got hooked.”

Pisnik was one of the first players the Texas Ranchers drafted into the newly remodeled MLP in 2024. Today, her experience balances out the Rancher’s youth.

Alshon, Oncin, and Loyd make up the men’s roster, while Pisnik, Etta Tuionetoa, and Helena Jansen comprise the women’s roster. Those six players all live in different parts of the country, with Alshon, Oncin, and Pisnik residing in Florida, Tuionetoa in Utah, Jansen in North Carolina, and Loyd in Texas.

A Native Texan Features For The Ranchers

Loyd didn’t play on the second night of the Austin tour stop, but he surely stood out. Wearing a cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses, he embodied the look of a “Rancher” and played the part of a good teammate, throwing his hands in the air before the match and connecting with fans during breaks in action.

Loyd believes connection is as important as ever in a sport like Pickleball, which is trying to retain loyalty and ownership from fans who, in many ways, will determine the promotion and growth of this league.

In 2024, according to Pickleheads, a digital resource for pickleball facts and figures, the growth rate for the sport was 311-percent and the sport captured a $1.5 billion dollar market size—though another report contends that figure is even higher—with that number expected to balloon substantially by 2030.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it just off players and investors,” Loyd said of the impending growth of the league. “There has to be fan engagement. They have to come and enjoy the show we’re putting on and want more from it.

“We have a responsibility,” he added, “to be good ambassadors for the sport.”

The 6-foot Loyd, much like Pisnik, is also a former tennis player. A graduate of the University of Texas Rio Grand Valley, he’s a former doubles standout and lifelong Texan from the Dallas area whose career was known for “touch shots” and “playing the game in a funky way.”

Sometime after the pandemic, though, Loyd started his pickleball journey for the first time and met Tim Klitch, one of Major League Pickleball’s original investors and a Texas Ranchers owner.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is sick!’” Loyd said of the sport.

Klitch would later develop the Austin Pickle Ranch, transforming the former headquarters of Golfsmith into an expansive 50,000-square foot property featuring indoor courts, outdoor courts, and much more.

“He’s like, ‘If you want to get involved in this, you should get an MBA and then try to figure this out,’” Loyd said, “and that’s exactly what I did.”

After picking up his MBA from Ottawa University in Arizona, Loyd started working as a product manager for HEAD in the pickleball division. But his career in the emerging sport took off soon thereafter, and Loyd was ranked No. 10 in singles and top 50 in doubles, prompting his draft into Major League Pickleball. Contrary to his tennis profile, Loyd is now seen as a “ball striker” and “someone who is aggressive and brings a lot of power.”

Loyd and Pisnik both say they make a considerable living from the sport, with each confirming they don’t necessarily have to work outside of the revenue they generate from salary, sponsorships, appearance fees, and prize money.

Players like 18-year-old Anna Lleigh Waters, of the New Jersey 5s, earn over $3 million per year, partly due to her influence and promotional appeal—she even has her own signature paddle.

That’s good news for a league that’s growing.

“The potential is there, and I think it can be sustainable,” Pisnik said.

A Tour Stop, And A Season Continues

Of course, winning takes time and patience.

On the tour stop in Austin during Memorial Day weekend, a four-day homestand that brought four other teams from Dallas, New Jersey, Miami, and Orlando into town, the Texas Ranchers split their matches, earning two wins over four games.

On the Saturday I attended the Rancher’s match at the Austin Pickle Ranch, the team was jolted by an 11-1 loss in its first women’s game, before following with wins in two of the next three, largely led by Alshon’s momentum-swinging hits and confidence.

The fifth game—which in pickleball morphs from men’s and women’s and mixed doubles play to quick-transition singles action over the fifth set, called a “dreambreaker”—was rapid-fire and electric. In Pickleball speak, Pisnik said, there were “speed-ups” and “hand-battles,” meaning players essentially charged the net and started smacking the ball back and forth.

Runs came quick and fast, and big hits often found players out of position and scrambling. As the game held tight and the match was in the balance over the final points, the Dallas Flash stomped their foot down on the final play, winning the final two points as Jorja Johnson closed out the match.

Not everything went to plan, of course, but that’s sports.

Major League Pickleball is learning that quickly, too.