美国西部大学匹克球现状（上）

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As the second installment of the TUNDRA'S five-part series exploring the state of collegiate pickleball across the U.S., today's entry focuses on the sport at Western colleges and universities.
　　
　　The Background
Unlike NCAA sports, college pickleball consists of student-run club teams competing against other schools at regional matches and tournaments. Ratings system DUPR has emerged as the main governing body in college pickleball, with 12 regional tournaments hosted nationally in 2023 (expected to increase substantially in 2024) including DUPR Collegiate Individual National Championship (awarded to single player) and DUPR Collegiate National Championship (team competition).
With the sport's rapid growth now scaling at the collegiate level, established organizations including USA Pickleball and APP are investing heavily in the vertical as well as start-ups including the new National Collegiate Pickleball Association (NCPA), which has plans to host four regional tournaments and a national championship during 2024.
The Teams
College pickleball may be too young to have established powerhouses in the same vein as Duke men's basketball, UConn women's basketball or Alabama football, but that doesn't mean pickleball doesn't have its contenders.
In the West, the gold standard is Utah Tech University. The Trailblazers won every DUPR regional tournament in the West last year. Currently ranked No. 3 in the country per DUPR's GAMMA Power Rankings, the St. George, UT university is the only school in the country to offer pickleball scholarships. The scholarships, awarded annually to four members of the team, are sponsored by St. George-based staffing company UCP. The scholarships don't cover full tuition, but they're not insignificant - they cover six credit hours which is nearly half of a traditional semester.

UNIVERSITY
The Trailblazers took second place in the 2022 DUPR Collegiate National Championships, before getting bounced by the eventual champions, the University of Virginia, in the semifinals this year.
They finally took home gold at a national tournament in early January, winning the APP Tour's first ever Collegiate Championships. The club's weekly meetings draw over 80 students and in total, it boasts 600 members. That's one out of every 20 students at the 12,000-student school.
Just over three hours up I-15, Utah Valley University in Orem ranks No. 5 in the country, per DUPR. The 44,000-student school entered the National Championships ranked No. 4 before being upset in the quarterfinals at the hands of then-No. 7 Florida Atlantic University. The team bounced back with a strong showing at the APP Collegiate Championships, though, reaching the semifinals before losing to Utah Tech.
Believe it or not, the next-highest ranked team in the West also hails from Utah - Utah State
University ranks No. 7. Like their valley-dwelling neighbors, Utah State fell one spot in the DUPR
rankings after a disappointing showing at the National Championships - the Aggies didn't make it out of the group stage.
Coming in at No. 9, Grand Canyon University is the only school in DUPR's top-ten in the West outside of the Beehive State. GCU also suffered an early upset in the National Championships, capping a concerning trend for the West. Better known for its online offerings, GU's Phoenix campus houses 20,000 students, who apparently love pickleball. The school recently converted space in its gym into new pickleball courts.
The West isn't nearly as well represented in the teens of DUPR's rankings as it is in the top ten.
The University of Utah is the next highest ranked Western school at No. 18 - 15 spots below their more technical counterparts. At No. 19, Arizona State University puts a dent in Utah's monopoly on the sport at the collegiate level. UC San Diego and the University of Arizona round out the list of Western schools in the top-25, coming in at No. 22 and No. 24, respectively.

The West: Region of Underdogs
Interestingly, the top teams in the West tend not to be traditional powerhouses in other sports.
This makes sense, as college pickleball is so new, and very accessible and low budget compared to established NCAA sports. But this isn't at all the case in other regions. Of DUPR's top 20 teams, only five come from schools that don't compete in the NCAA's "Power Five" conferences in other sports. Four of those are from the West. The fifth, Florida Atlantic University, is still a strong sports school, making the NCAA Men's Final Four last year.
Yet in the West, the strongest schools have virtually no national sports presence outside of pickleball. Utah Tech didn't play Division I sports until 2020. Grand Canyon didn't until 2013. Both, along with Utah Valley, currently compete in the Western Athletic Conference - which doesn't even have football - for other sports. You'd have to go all the way down to the fifth best team in the region, the University of Utah, to find a "Power Five"
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