Did you know the Coachella Valley is the home of a championship professional pickleball team?
Champions Series Pickleball, a professional league formerly known as the National Pickleball League, welcomed their first California team, the 50-and-older Coachella Valley Scorpions, in 2024. The Scorpions, thanks to a partnership with actor Vince Vaughn, drafted locals onto a competitive team—a team that won the league championship in 2025.
The Coachella Valley Scorpions will make their 2026 debut in an exhibition match against the LA Xtreme at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, July 9, at Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage.
During a recent phone interview with Kim Jagd—co-owner, general manager, managing partner and player with the Scorpions—she explained how she fell in love with pickleball.
“I was out and about on a hike, going to The Cross over by Cahuilla Park, and I heard this crazy noise coming from the two tennis courts that are right there,” Jagd said. “I had to go see what was going on, because I was a tennis player in my youth, and I had never even heard of pickleball before. I saw these people playing on this little court, and just kind of fell into the sport. I was closely approaching the age of 50, and thought, ‘God, this is a really cool thing. They play it in the senior games in Utah, and the Palm Desert Senior Games, so maybe this could be something else I can do with all my sports background and all the time that I had since retiring.’”
Jagd—a national volleyball champion in 1984, and an associate head volleyball coach from 1992 to 2010 at UCLA—linked up with other desert residents to learn more.
“I got grouped into a bunch of really great tennis pros here in the valley,” Jagd said. “One was Morgan Evans, who is a kind of an OG in the pickleball sport now; and Marcin Rozpedski; he is running a tennis training academy here in the valley. Then (I met) a guy that had been playing pickleball a little longer than me, Scott Burr, who is also on the team right now. We just took on learning this crazy game. … Then we started traveling to tournaments.”
After participating in the senior pro leagues and winning a number of tournaments, Jagd said, she and others noticed that senior leagues were beginning to “take a back seat” at pickleball events. They began searching for something new.
“Several senior pros and myself got together and said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this; we’ve got to find our own niche, our own place to play,’ and several of these friends went off and started what was called the National Pickleball League, and that was Rick Witsken and Beth Bellamy, two of the top pros at that time,” Jagd said. “They came up with this idea to start a team league, which was starting to take shape as even more fun in pickleball than just regular tournaments. … Team pickleball is just really different. It’s more like my background, playing volleyball with 12 other girls.”
Jagd decided to enter the new league’s player draft.
“I got drafted by a team out of Indianapolis called the Indy Drivers, and that that first year of the league, the Drivers were actually able to win the championship—and I was even more passionate about team pickleball. I just thought it was just the greatest thing,” she said.
The Coachella Valley Scorpions were the seventh team in Champions Series Pickleball, joining the league in 2024.
“We had an injury-plagued season and ended up finishing fifth in the league out of 12 teams. We were pretty proud of that fifth, considering how beat up we were,” Jagd said. “We really wanted to retool and put together a great team in 2025, and put even more work into the recruiting and the drafting and finding great local Southern California talent and Coachella Valley talent. We put together a great squad—and we were able to win the league, which was absolutely stunning, in our second year.”
The Scorpions will kick off their third year at their July 9 exhibition with a trophy presentation, a celebrity match, and the debut of new sub-leagues.
“The league has now expanded to include sub-leagues for 40-year-olds, and 60 and over, so I now have a 40-year-old team, a 50-year-old team, and I have a 60-year-old team, all under the umbrella of the Scorpions—so we have the opportunity to win three championships in 2026,” Jagd said.
Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage is, as of now, the only place to see the Coachella Valley Scorpions play at home. Jagd said the lack of an indoor pickleball court in the desert keeps the team from hosting events.
“I’m doing my best to do as many small events as we can here in the desert to bring attention to the Scorpions, but we cannot host an event for our league,” she said. “It’s the top of my mission board to help see a nice-sized indoor facility come to the desert, that would not only be a home of the Scorpions, but it would be a place to play, have events, be a community asset—after school programs, all kinds of things.”
Agua Caliente, which also sponsors the Scorpions, transforms The Show concert venue into a temporary pickleball court.
“They bought a temporary court; it’s called a PickleRoll,” Jagd said. “Pickleball is very hard to play on anything but a proper surface, so what they’ve done is they’ve used their concert hall … and they take all the chairs out of the orchestra, and they put down this PickleRoll court for us. Last year, we had over 400 people come to a media day event and exhibitions.”
“They take all the chairs out of the orchestra, and they put down this PickleRoll court for us. Last year, we had over 400 people come to a media day event and exhibitions.”
Kim Jagd, on playing Pickleball at The Show at Agua Caliente rancho Mirage
Despite the lack of a home court, Jagd and the Scorpions continue to promote pickleball in the desert, including a program at Desert Horizons Country Club.
“We started the pickleball program here, probably 11 years ago, on one paddle tennis court, and now with our country club remodel, we have 11 permanent courts, individually fenced, with LED lights,” she said. “It’s absolutely a stunning investment by the club, to put $3 million in over at our courts—and we’ve become known as quite a pickleball program now. They’re super-supportive of the Scorpions and my involvement with the pro team, and they’re very willing to share the courts with me and let me bring events in.”
Champions Series Pickleball is on the rise, welcoming four new teams to the league this year: the Detroit Disrupters, Los Angeles Xtreme, Phoenix Firebirds, and Las Vegas Headliners.
“I had no competition for the talent in Southern California, so I could pick who I wanted—and now all of a sudden, there’s a team in L.A., and there’s a team in Vegas, and there’s a team in Phoenix,” Jagd said. “My territory got a lot smaller, and they don’t know the talent as well as I do yet, but they will. … I had to work a lot harder this year, and maybe I didn’t get as much of the top talent, but I was also able to find talent, from my years of experience of recruiting, that I know that I can develop.”
Jagd and the Coachella Valley Scorpions hope the desert can become a hotspot for pickleball.
“It could be this community asset for the kids who live here full-time to get out of the heat and train at a sport that is so fun,” she said. “We’ve got great coaches in this valley, so it can be the next hotspot for training young pickleball pros. Anna Leigh Waters made $2 million last year in professional pickleball, so the money is there now. We’ve got to hit the grassroots. Naples, Fla., is a hot spot; Austin is a hot spot, so why can’t the Coachella Valley be that West Coast location?”
The Coachella Valley Scorpions play the LA Xtreme in an exhibition match at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, July 9, at Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage, at 32250 Bob Hope Drive. Tickets start at $40.75. For tickets, visit aguacalientecasinos.com.
