The 2026 Caribbean Pickleball Championships are set to begin this week and Cayman is looking to shake things up in Bermuda.
The regional competition, set to take place at the WER Joell Tennis Stadium in Pembroke, will bring together juniors, adults and senior division athletes from 17-21 March.
“The Caribbean Pickleball Championships week features two distinct but connected tournaments: Rally on the Rock and the Caribbean Championship Cup. Together they provide open competition for all players and a high-performance team format that prepares islands for World Cup–style play,” stated the Pickleball Association Bermuda’s website.
Participating nations consist of host nation Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
The championships serve as a high-performance stage for established Caribbean federations and invited nations alike including Aruba, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bonaire and the Dominican Republic.
‘We’re looking to avenge’
On the Cayman side, the Open Team consists of Elena Testori, captain, Anita Warhurst, Yaniv Semo and Steve Thompson while the Senior Team comprises David Allott, captain, Munir Ali, Ermanno Scerrati, Claire Hughes, Claire Roscoe and Pam Robinson.
Following a narrow defeat against Bermuda during the inaugural 2025 championships hosted in Cayman, the local squad enters this year’s competition with a focus on reversing that result.
Steve Thompson, Open Team player and a founding member of Pickleball Cayman, said, “After a close matchup decided in a tiebreaker against Bermuda in last year’s Caribbean Championship, … we’re looking to avenge the 2025 result on Bermuda’s home soil.”
Caribbean Championship Cup
During the Caribbean Championship Cup, set for 20-21 March, each delegation will face off against all other teams in their group in a round-robin format using the regular scoring system to 15 points (won by a difference of one point).
The group stage, which will see the national Cayman squad compete, is set to be played on the Friday, with the playoffs and finals set for the following day.
The tournament structure of the Cup is designed to test the full depth of each national roster through a format modeled after the Pickleball World Cup.
The Cup format consists of Women’s Doubles, Men’s Doubles, Mixed Doubles 1, Mixed Doubles 2, Women’s Singles and Men’s Singles.
To secure a victory, a nation must win four of these six games. In the event of a 3-3 deadlock, the winner is determined through a rotating singles Final Battle – a rally-scoring singles game played to 21 points (win by two).
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