Stinging Competition: The Kansas City Stingers, a new professional pickleball team, is coming to Kansas City with their season starting later this month

The National Pickleball League added the Kansas City Stingers as a part of a six-team expansion for the 2024 season, adding to Kansas City’s reputation of the “most pickleball obsessed city,” according to offers.bet. 

Stingers co-owner and owner of the SW19 pickleball facility on State Line Daryl Wyatt says pickleball’s popularity is displayed by the quantity of facilities and courts around the metro-area.

“It creates a lot of excitement for Kansas City Pickleball and for the club,” Wyatt said. 

The NPL is made up of 12 teams and was established in 2023. The league will play monthly weekend-long tournaments in various facilities across the country, which will be live streamed either on CBS Sports or the NPL’s YouTube. 

“We’re really excited about the growth of pickleball,” NPL co-owner Michael Chen said. “Our mission has really changed lives and people are sticking to the game of pickleball.” 

Pickleball Club Co-Captain Autumn Sun is excited about the new team and the 50+ age requirement for the Champion-Pro league.

“I think that Kansas City’s a big pickleball hub and the fact that [we’re] getting a team doesn’t really surprise me,” Sun said. “The [50 years and older age requirement] is really different and that makes the team super unique for the city.” 

Wyatt originally wanted to join the league as just a player, but after talking to other members of the league, he noticed there was an opportunity for him to make his own team. Eventually, Wyatt got on a waitlist until one team dropped out in mid-January — making the Kansas City Stingers an official NPL team. 

After combines in Florida and Texas and a local combine in KC last month, the league is set to draft players later this month. According to Chicken N’ Pickle President and East mom Kelli Alldredge, Kansas City has a high amount of pickleball courts compared to other cities. 

“Kansas City has proven over and over again that we’re a sports town,” Alldredge said. “[With all of] our professional teams, I have no doubt that we’ll take our Midwest values and support this pickleball team like we do everything else in the city.”

According to Wyatt, the intention of hosting a local combine along with the league-wide ones was to give locals a chance to be on the team and bring in more local attention from players’ family and friends. 

When Chen had the idea to start the league in 2022, he contacted Vermillion and Chicken N’ Pickle — a Kansas City-based pickleball entertainment venue with eight locations nationwide — for assistance with kickstarting the league. 

“Every single person that I met in Kansas City was just a die hard fan of all [KC professional] teams,” Chicken N’ Pickle Pickleball Partnerships Coordinator Lindsay Vermillion said. “So I think it’s a natural fit to have those built in die hard fans for pickleball as well.”

For the first year, Chicken N’ Pickle provided the NPL with courts to host events on, food for the players and hosted parties for the players the night before the tournament. But, now that the league has doubled in size, the NPL outgrew Chicken N’ Pickle’s facilities and host smaller events like combines there. 

“They gave us hope for the first year,” Chen said. “They gave us a place to play and without [Chicken N’ Pickle], we would’ve never had a chance to launch our league last year.” 

This year, the league will host six tournaments in larger locations, including in Kansas City at the KC Convention Center at PickleCon from Aug. 9-11.

“The league is successful not only because of the players in the league, but because the community embraces it,” Chen said. “We just felt that [Kansas City] really has a community that will raise the Kansas City Stingers.”