The RoundHouse | 12/22/2017 1:31:00 PM

By Paul Suellentrop
 
Lucy Kovalova discovered pickleball two years ago at Wichita Country Club. On Saturday, her progress in the sport - part tennis, part badminton, part table tennis – will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network.
 
Kovalova, a Wichita State graduate student and former Shocker tennis student-athlete, won a gold (mixed doubles) silver (women's doubles) and bronze (singles) in the open division, earning $25,000 in prize money, at the USAPA National Tournament in early November in Arizona. She competed in mixed doubles with Wichitan Matt Wright, a former tennis player at Michigan, and she expects their finals match to be part of Saturday's noon broadcast.
 
"The level of competition was very high and both of us did very well," Kovalova wrote in a text message. "It was a great feeling to compete and play on the championship court."
 
Wright and Kovalova have competed together for the past two years and also won the 2017 Tournament of Champions and 2017 U.S. Open.
 
Pickleball is played on a rectangular court, as large as 34 feet by 64 feet. Competitors use a paddle (larger than ones used for table tennis; smaller than tennis) and plastic ball with holes.
 
"A person with tennis background would take only a little time to get used to shorter paddle and wiffle ball," she said. "All of us tried it and loved it right away. It was pretty easy transition from tennis."
 
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.