Paddletek Once Bet on a 12-Year-Old Anna Leigh Waters. Now It's Elsie Hendershot, 13.
Andrew LeeElsie Hendershot screamed in the car on the way to practice. That was the moment she found out the St. Louis Shock had picked her Round 2, Pick 2 in the 2026 Major League Pickleball Draft, the youngest player ever selected in the league's history.
This week, Paddletek made her rise official. The paddle brand posted a photo of Elsie Hendershot, 13, in a Team Paddletek cap, captioned simply: "Welcome to the family, @leftyhendershot."
A Fast Rise Through the Ranks
Hendershot found pickleball about three and a half years ago, after two years playing competitive club soccer. "When I discovered pickleball approximately three-and-a-half years ago, everything changed," she has said, and she has trained daily for roughly the two and a half years since. She is from Mapleton, Utah, and remains enrolled in traditional school even as her father Cade travels with her to tournaments and her mother holds down life at home.
The junior results came first: a first Grand Slam title won by beating both the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, then regular wins on the regional moneyball circuit. A professional PPA Tour contract followed in 2025, and on 27 February 2026 the St. Louis Shock made her their Round 2, Pick 2 selection, the youngest player drafted in MLP history.
She was then traded to Chicago Slice in the league's first-ever four-team trade. The move paid off at MLP Orlando (30 July-2 August 2026), when Hendershot scored the clinching points in a 25-23 Dreambreaker win over the California Black Bears, a result that sent Chicago into the playoffs and ended California's season. She now sits at No. 82 in the PPA's Women's World Pickleball Rankings, competing across women's doubles, mixed doubles and singles.
A New Logo on Her Paddle
Paddletek's post does not spell out contract terms, and Hendershot is not just tagged in it, she is a co-author on the announcement itself. Her own Instagram bio already lists Paddletek among her affiliations, alongside the PPA Tour, Major League Pickleball, the Chicago Slice and Pay It 4RTH. Her equipment listing on the PPA Tour's own site names the paddle directly: a PaddleTek ESQ-C 12.7mm.
A Familiar Playbook, Now Running in Malaysia Too
Paddletek has done this before. In an August post introducing its own Malaysia Junior Pickleball Team, Paddletek Malaysia pointed to two examples of the brand betting early on young talent: "Paddletek signed Anna Leigh Waters, the GOAT, when she was 12. Now, another young talent, Elsie Hendershot, at 13, is competing in MLP as a key player of Chicago Slice." At the time, Hendershot was still an outside inspiration, not yet a signed athlete. Six weeks later, that changed.
The pattern is current on both sides of the brand right now. Paddletek Malaysia has added four more junior signings of its own since the start of September, in the same weeks the global side of the brand welcomed a 13-year-old MLP player from Utah.
Hendershot's own MLP season continues into the playoffs she helped Chicago Slice clinch, now with a Paddletek logo on the paddle she carries into every match.
This article is based on social media posts and historical data tracked by Pickle361.
