{"id":310473,"date":"2026-06-17T14:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/310473\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T14:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:40:07","slug":"mlp-st-petersburg-event-preview-the-dink-pickleball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/310473\/","title":{"rendered":"MLP St. Petersburg Event Preview \u2013 The Dink Pickleball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than a year after opening its doors for the first time to the public<\/a>, the St. Pete Athletic Club is hosting its first Major League Pickleball (MLP) event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Graham D\u2019Amico, known as one of the owners of the Florida Smash in MLP, a co-host on the Bad Calls Pickleball Podcast<\/a>, is also a co-founder of St. Pete Athletic. If you read the club\u2019s About section<\/a>, D\u2019Amico and Rueben Pressman were co-founders of the venue. They quickly brought on Jarrett Sabatini and Nathan Stonecipher to make a very well rounded hospitality group to run St. Pete Athletic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

St. Pete is the fifth stop of the 2026 MLP season. Recaps of the first four stops:<\/p>\n

One extremely unique feature of the MLP St. Pete event is there is only one court – Championship Court. At other venues, there is a Championship Court and a Grandstand Court. Since this only has one court, the play has been extended an extra day. Play begins 11am ET on pickleballtv on Wednesday, June 17. Pool play occurs Wednesday – Saturday, with the usual Super Sunday finals.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at the pools<\/p>\n

Pool A<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Pickleball TeamChicago SliceFlorida SmashLA Mad DropsUtah Black Diamonds<\/p>\n

Pool B<\/p>\n

Columbus SlidersMiami Pickleball ClubOrlando SqueezePalm Beach RoyalsSt. Louis ShockTexas Ranchers<\/p>\n

Of note, the Utah Black Diamonds and Miami Pickleball Club switched pools approximately three weeks before play at St. Pete begins.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If your company is interested in reaching an audience of active pickleballers, you may want to\u00a0give us a shout<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tice\u2019s Top Five Matches to Watch<\/p>\n

Wednesday – 12:30pm – Texas Ranchers vs. Palm Beach Royals<\/p>\n

Texas and Palm Beach are 6th and 7th respectively, in terms of points per event – they are both looking to push for a top four seed, but this early event matchup could go a long way in determining who leaves St. Pete with big points<\/p>\n

Wednesday – 6:30pm – Miami Pickleball Club vs. Orlando Squeeze<\/p>\n

Dylan Frazier recently got traded to Miami in exchange for Nico Acevedo and Dylan played for Orlando for the majority of the last two seasons – Is Miami able to pull off an upset in Florida, or is Orlando going to come away with points?<\/p>\n

Thursday – 6:30pm – Chicago Slice vs. Utah Black Diamonds<\/p>\n

Utah and Chicago are both hovering right around the playoff mark (top 12) – Chicago is 11th and Utah is tied for 12th in terms of points per event – these two teams are realistically trying to fight for third place in the group and this one has big implications on that race<\/p>\n

Saturday – 9am – Texas Ranchers vs. Columbus Sliders<\/p>\n

Columbus is playing Hurricane Tyra Black in her first event with the team after a blockbuster trade for Danni-Elle Townsend – If the Sliders want to earn significant points from this event, they are circling this matchup on their calendar<\/p>\n

Saturday – 3pm – St. Louis Shock vs. Columbus Sliders<\/p>\n

St. Louis is the prohibitive favorite in Pool B, but the Ranchers and Sliders may have something to say about that – this matchup could determine who wins the pool and who comes in secondWeather Outlook<\/p>\n

The weather is going to be inconsequential – all play is indoors!<\/p>\n

How to Watch MLP St. Petersburg & Broadcast Schedule<\/p>\n

Sunday, June 21<\/p>\n

All day on MSG Network 10AM ET – 6PM ET (Local)\"\"Team by Team Quick GlancePool A<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Pickleball Team<\/p>\n

Roster: Riley Newman, Christian Alshon, Jackie Kawamoto, Rachel Rohrabacher, Chris Haworth, and Hannah Blatt<\/p>\n

Chicago Slice<\/p>\n

Roster: Hunter Johnson, Zane Navratil, Jamie Wei, Mari Humberg, Jalina Ingram, and AJ Koller<\/p>\n

Florida Smash\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roster: Travis Rettenmaier, Martina Frantova, Cason Campbell, Paula Rives Palau, Chris Crouch, and Zoey Weil<\/p>\n

LA Mad Drops<\/p>\n

Roster: Ben Johns, Catherine Parenteau, Jade Kawamoto, Max Freeman, Gabe Joseph, and Samantha Parker<\/p>\n

Utah Black Diamonds<\/p>\n

Roster: Etta Tuionetoa, Connor Garnett, Allyce Jones, Tama Shimabukuro, Victoria DiMuzio, and Tyler LoongGroup B\u00a0<\/p>\n

Columbus Sliders<\/p>\n

Roster: Andrei Daescu, Parris Todd, CJ Klinger, Hurricane Tyra Black, Alex Crum, and Judit Castillo<\/p>\n

Miami Pickleball Club<\/p>\n

Roster: Dylan Frazier, Yuta Funemizu, Estee Widdershoven, Isabella Dunlap, Clayton Powell, and Rika Fujiwara<\/p>\n

Orlando Squeeze<\/p>\n

Roster: Federico Staksrud, Lacy Schneemann, Milan Rane, Jack Sock, Alex Walker, and Yates Johnson<\/p>\n

Palm Beach Royals<\/p>\n

Roster: Sofia Sewing, Tyson McGuffin, Dekel Bar, Tina Pisnik, Tammy Emmrich, and Grayson Goldin<\/p>\n

St. Louis Shock<\/p>\n

Roster: Anna Bright, Hayden Patriquin, Gabe Tardio, Kate Fahey, Elsie Hendershot, and John Lucian Goins<\/p>\n

Texas Ranchers\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roster: Eric Oncins, Lea Jansen, Layne Sleeth, Nico Acevedo, Matthew Barlow, and Marcela Hones <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than a year after opening its doors for the first time to the public, the St. Pete…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-310473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}