Pickleball Champions League Launches PCL Rising Stars for Asia’s Youth Standouts – Pickleball News Asia
Pickleball Champions League (PCL Asia) has launched the PCL Rising Stars (U19), a youth development
The PCL Rising Stars provides a structured pathway for under-19 pickleball players, offering high-level competition, standardised equipment, and meaningful regional exposure. It features teams composed of two male and two female players who will compete in national, regional, and provincial qualifiers to reach the Finals.
Pickleball is growing rapidly across Asia, and it is critical that youth development keeps pace with the sport’s momentum. Rising Stars is about building the foundation properly by investing in young talent, professional structure, and long-term opportunity.
– Alex Yuen, President of PCL
The PCL Rising Stars Finals will be held at the currently under-construction Asia Elite Pickleball Academy (AEPA), located at the Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Experimental School – Hainan Campus. The AEPA is intended to be a high-performance training and competition hub within one of China’s premier elite sports and academic institutions, which is home to established Olympic-level training programmes in sports such as tennis.
Notably, PCL Rising Stars is unlike traditional junior tournaments, as it is specifically designed with long-term athlete development at its core. To this end, the programme emphasises consistency, fairness, and visibility. It also ensures that young players are not only competing but are also being supported within a professional, player-first environment that reflects the future of the sport.
As part of the PCL Rising Stars pathway, the winning team and a select group of standout players from the Finals will be eligible for scholarships to attend AEPA. These scholarships are designed to provide exceptional young athletes with access to world-class training, education, and daily immersion in a high-performance environment, representing a potentially life-changing opportunity to pursue excellence at the highest level of the sport.
With PCL Rising Stars, PCL Asia is continuing its mission to professionalise pickleball across the region while remaining youth-focused, athlete-first, and brand-safe for partners.
