In former times, Rafael Lenhard competed at the Barnes Center in junior tennis.
The former Carlsbad resident returned this week playing a new sport: pickleball.
Lenhard has found a new professional career with Major League Pickleball’s SoCal Hard Eights, who placed fourth in the MLP tournament that concluded Sunday.
“It’s been great,” said Lenhard, 29, enjoying a racket revival in a switch after last playing collegiate tennis. “It’s my dream, and I’m sure it is for a lot of people.”
The Hard Eights stepped up after entering the tourney 10th in the standings of the 20-team league, based on points per event.
Even a bigger jump came from the eighth-ranked Dallas Flash, which took the tourney title 3-1 over the defending MLP champion Columbus Sliders.
There was a near-capacity crowd of close to 1,000 fans in the return of MLP to San Diego for the second straight year. In the preceding third-place match, SoCal fell to the Atlanta Bouncers 3-0. Lenhard was available for singles if a fifth-set Dreambreaker had been needed.
Lenhard attended La Costa Canyon High School as a freshman, then headed to an Irvine tennis academy for his remaining prep years before playing collegiately at Cal Poly.
He played two seasons in San Luis Obispo, then left the game, citing tennis burnout.
In December 2023, at the urging of an old friend, Lenhard took up pickleball at Carlsbad’s Poinsettia Park. The Hard Eights drafted him at the start of this year.
“Having been pretty burned out, that’s probably what makes me appreciate pickleball so much,” said Lenhard, 29 and now living in Las Vegas. “You have the professional lifestyle and compete at the highest level.”
The final brought together the last two MLP champions.
But the Flash had experienced hard times before this seventh of nine tournaments on the season.
“So we went back to the drawing board on a lot of things,” said Augustus Ge, who contributed to wins in his doubles sets in the final. “We always believed in each other that we can win.”
Ge, who grew up in Phoenix and made trips to the Barnes Center for junior tennis, remains from the 2024 title team along with JW Johnson.
“So we know what a winning team looks like,” Ge said. “We’re just trying to build back to that.”
Many fans were late to the final after watching the fifth-place match on the adjacent Grandstand Court. With standout Ben Johns leading the way, the Los Angeles Mad Drops beat the California Black Bears 3-0.
Pivotal to Dallas reaching the final from Group 1 was a closing 3-2 victory over the Mad Drops to complete a 4-0 record in round-robin play.
The Flash took the deciding Dreambreaker with rotating singles players 21-18 on a winning point by Ge.
In Group 2, the Sliders swept their five matches with a 20-game edge overall in games won and 148-point advantage overall.
A year ago, the San Diego event opened the playoffs; this time, it was switched to a regular-season tournament and moved from August to July due to a scheduling conflict with the USTA Billie Jean King Girls 16s and 18s National Championships.
San Diego again figures to be a contender for the playoffs next year, said Jesse Steinberg, the Chief Operating Officer at the Barnes Center. He also indicated a preference for the August dates when possible. The 11 tourney teams were assigned ahead of the season. Squads compete in five tourneys overall during the season. Absent from the tourney were the New Jersey 5’s and the St. Louis Shock, who share the league lead.