The first Uttar Pradesh Pickleball Championship, held at Noida Stadium, concluded on February 5 amidst much enthusiasm and fanfare that saw the state’s top 80 players battling it out across 10 categories and across all age groups. The tournament, hosted by Pickleball Sports Association (UPSPA), was sponsored by The Heritage School, Noida and grocery chain Mart n More and was LIVE streamed by ABP LIVE.
The Heritage School has branches in Gurgaon, Vasant Kunj and Rohini. The Heritage Group of Schools are pioneers of the experiential learning model and offer an un-matched environment to prepare well-rounded leaders of tomorrow. The school, whose director is Mr Navneet Kabra, has state-of-the-art infrastructure like revolutionary makerspace lab, sports facilities, smart-tech enabled classrooms.
Mart n More, a supermarket chain, is a one stop shop for all your daily needs like vegetables, fruits, medicines and laundry care. It has five branches across Noida.
The title sponsor of the inaugural Uttar Pradesh Pickleball Championship was Pickleball United. Other sponsors were Sports For Sure, The Approid Consulting, Prohealth Asia, Catch, Delta Wallace, SR College of Law (Ghaziabad), The Rising Star, Bhai G, De Vonk, Raghav Jewellers, Garry Sandhu Films, Security Solutions, Wild Water, Rackonnect to name a few.
The tournament, which was played across all disciplines singles, doubles and mixed doubles, saw players participating from Lucknow, Jhansi, Agra, Mathura and Gautam Buddha Nagar. Notably, more than 15 women players participated in the tournament, which was live streamed on ABP LIVE.
Continuing their impressive form after winning SILVER in the Bainbridge Cup 2022, Aman Grover and Sunil Garg secured GOLD in the 35+ Men’s Doubles after a nail-biting final match with Sukendra Singh and Sandeep Sinha, winning by a 2-1 margin.
Aman Grover also secured GOLD in Open Mixed Doubles category with Pratibha Mathuriya and won BRONZE in 35+ Men’s Singles category.
He concluded with 3 podium finishes and was declared the Man of the tournament.
Prabhat Mani Vats, who secured BRONZE in the nationals last year, bagged GOLD in the 35+ Men’s singles.
Mukul Mahajan won the SILVER in 35+ Men’s Singles category.
In other categories, the U19 Boys Doubles was won by Saksham Tyagi / Vihaan Goswami(GOLD) followed by Ayaan/Devesh & Aarav/Shubham(BRONZE), 19+ Men’s Singles was won by Navpuneet Singh(GOLD) followed by Ayush(SILVER) & Siddharth Mazumdar(BRONZE), 19+ Men’s doubles by father-son duo Tarun Goswami/Vihaan Goswami followed by Utraksh Mshra/Ayush(SILVER), Sunil Garg/Kalpit Sharma(BRONZE), 50+ Men’s Doubles by Pradeep Kumar Saxena/Satyakam Goswami(GOLD) followed by Manu Narang/Rajiv Kochhar(SILVER) and Uday Kumar Jain/Mahendra Nath Chaturvedi(BRONZE), 50+ Men’s Singles by Satyakam Goswami(GOLD) followed by Uday Kumar Jain(SILVER), Pradeep Kumar Saxena(BRONZE), Open Women’s Doubles by Aarna Goswami/Priyanshi Mathuriya(GOLD) followed by Aditi Joshi/Pratibha Mathuriya(SILVER) and Priyanka Goswami/Sonia Naresh(BRONZE) 50+ Women’s Singles by Abha Jain(GOLD) & Usha Jain(SILVER) and 50+ Mixed Doubles by Abha Jain / Sunil Kumar and Usha Jain / Rajendra Kumar Singh(SILVER).
Pradeep Kumar Saxena, Sunil Garg, Aman Grover, Vibhor Sharma, Hemant Yadav, Ashish Gupta, Piyush Chamoli and Rajarshi Sengupta Gupta are from the organising team and they say : “Organising the State tournament is like dreaming with eyes open. This wasn’t possible without the unending support of our sponsors and families.
Now, UPSPA, plans to host another BIG tournament called Uttar Pradesh Open Pickleball Championship 2023, sometime in April with many more BIG names from the industry and about 400 players across India. This is only going to get BIGGER and BETTER.