Yellow Jackets are making their mark on the fastest-growing sport in America. Randolph-Macon College’s club pickleball team competed in the TowneBank College Cup on Saturday, Feb. 17, at Performance Pickleball RVA. RMC delivered an impressive showing, advancing out of pool play and making an appearance in the quarterfinals.

Luis Geyne ’25 established the club team, which now boasts 30 registered members, in February of 2023. He joined Alex Benne ’25, Becky Villeda ’26, and Meg Hemphill ’27 as a four-person team at the TowneBank College Cup, the club’s first competitive appearance against other colleges.

RMC was the only school at the tournament whose NCAA programs compete at the Division III level; the rest of the competitors—30 teams in total from 11 institutions—were all Division I schools, including Virginia Tech, Virginia, North Carolina, Villanova, Duke, Maryland, Charlotte, Liberty, Clemson, and James Madison.

Each matchup consisted of a men’s doubles match, a women’s doubles match, and two mixed doubles matches. The Yellow Jackets swept all four matches against teams from Maryland, Virginia, and Duke before falling to a squad from Virginia Tech. The performance was enough to earn a spot in the knockout round, where RMC fell to the Hokies in the quarterfinals.

“I felt really proud competing for Randolph-Macon,” Geyne said. “We’re one of the only DIII schools with an established club and placing higher than a bunch of these big schools meant a lot to me.”

“It was cool to put Randolph-Macon on the map,” Benne added.

The Yellow Jackets will have more opportunities to compete this semester as well. DUPR (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Ranking, which acts as the governing body for collegiate pickleball) will host the Virginia Super Regional at Performance Pickleball on March 23-24, with four bids to the 2024 Collegiate National Championship up for grabs.