Every year, roughly 800k pounds of broken pickleballs end up in landfills. BounceBack Pickle was built to change that, and CourtReserve is making it easy for racquet and paddle clubs to get involved.
Through a new partnership, CourtReserve facilities can join BounceBack’s closed-loop recycling program, collecting damaged balls at their courts, sending them back for recycling, and earning recognition as a Sustainable Facility in the process.
Pickleballs do not last long. Depending on play and surface, a ball can crack in just a few games, and most racquet sports clubs have no end-of-life option once they do. As the sport grows, so does the pile.
Video Transcript
0:00You’re listening to Court Reserve [music] Unscripted with me, Ashley Owens.
0:2828 secondsHello, Ashley. Hey, how are you? I’m great, Dylan. So good to see you.
0:3232 secondsYou as well. You as What a great background. Where are you?
0:3636 secondsI know. I’m in Puerto Varda right now on a little postgrad trip, which is I mean it’s phenomenal.
0:4444 secondsThat is that’s fantastic. So, uh congratulations official graduate, right?
0:5151 secondsThank you. Yeah, I know. Like two weeks ago. So Oh, that’s so cool. Yeah.
0:5555 secondsSo, I mean, you’ve had quite the journey over the past couple of years. Um, and I’d love to like dig into your story and
1:031 minute, 3 secondstalk about like, you know, being such a young entrepreneur. So, tell me first how you got into pickle ball.
1:101 minute, 10 secondsHow did Okay. So, I I went to college in Southwest Florida at Florida GF Coast University, which Southwest Florida, as a lot of people know, is the pickle ball
1:181 minute, 18 secondscapital of the world in Naples. And it was kind of just natural like all of my friends started playing pickle ball. We made a big group chat. We all went out
1:261 minute, 26 secondsto the courts. It started out like once a week and then it was twice a week and then we’re out there every single day.
1:321 minute, 32 secondsSome friends stayed, some friends dwindled off. Um, and I loved it. I I couldn’t get enough of it. Um, so I
1:401 minute, 40 secondscontinued playing and that was maybe two and a half, three years ago. Um, and that’s that was really the the start of getting into pickle ball for me.
1:481 minute, 48 secondsSo was it you’re going to go on the pro tour because everybody’s a 50, right? I mean, or was this just, you know, you just loved it so much because it was the
1:561 minute, 56 secondssocial part and the gathering and all of that?
1:581 minute, 58 secondsIt was it was an incredibly social aspect of my college life. Um, when when we first started playing and and all the
2:052 minutes, 5 secondscollege guys started going out there, it was kind of like a, oh, isn’t this like an older person’s sport? And then when we started playing, it was like, oh no,
2:142 minutes, 14 secondsthis is a lot of fun. And it it was honestly a little addictive. Um, none of us were trying to go pro. We were all
2:212 minutes, 21 secondsout having a great time. Some of us got better. Um, and I’m I’m by no means a great player. I’m a 3540 on a good day.
2:292 minutes, 29 secondsUm, and it’s the the the social aspect of it is is awesome.
2:362 minutes, 36 secondsYeah. Especially and it doesn’t matter the age. I mean, that’s the great thing about pickle ball. You’ve probably seen it playing in the public space, but I
2:432 minutes, 43 secondsmean, young playing with an older generation, families, it’s such it’s such a a cool like sport to be a part of right now.
2:512 minutes, 51 seconds100%. And and in Southwest Florida, we would be mixing in with the older folk, the younger folk, whatever it was. And games were competitive all over the place. It was a lot of fun.
3:003 minutesThat’s so cool. So, tell me about this idea that you uh had. I guess it was a best friend. Do you give him credit?
3:073 minutes, 7 secondsYeah. Yeah. So, he was he was my roommate. um in college and we uh we were out playing. He he’s actually one
3:153 minutes, 15 secondsof the best players I personally know now. Um he he’s been doing his own social media stuff and uh we were out
3:233 minutes, 23 secondsout at the pickle ball courts. We broke a ball or we’re breaking a lot of balls.
3:283 minutes, 28 secondsIt was colder out and I know in Florida it doesn’t get super cold, but the balls crack quicker when it’s cold and we just kept throwing them away. Um, every time
3:363 minutes, 36 secondswe’d lift up a flap to a trash can, we’d just see 20, 30 balls in there. And we were at a public park, we knew that the trash was getting collected like at
3:443 minutes, 44 secondsleast once a week. And I was an entrepreneurship major in college, so I was kind of always looking for like those little problems, find a solution to the problem. And one day, I just went
3:533 minutes, 53 secondshome, did a little research, um, kind of after he mentioned something. And there wasn’t a whole lot in the pickleball recycling space. a couple nonprofits
4:014 minutes, 1 secondthat were just sending them to general recycling partners. Um, and my first obvious thought was, why don’t we try
4:094 minutes, 9 secondsand turn these things back into new ones? Um, and the idea developed a little bit. I ordered a logo, stuck it on my wall. I was like a big sticker.
4:174 minutes, 17 secondsUm, and that ended up being the first sticker that I stuck on one of the bounceback recycling bins. Um, my school then had a startup pitch competition
4:254 minutes, 25 secondsthat I figured I’d enter. [snorts] There was over a hundred applicants. I ended up getting to the finals. It was like a Shark Tank style pitch in front of maybe
4:344 minutes, 34 seconds70 80 people and fortunately I won the whole thing which was awesome. Uh I got some seed money to continue going and
4:414 minutes, 41 secondsscaling throughout last summer. Um got enough plastic to do a first test batch run and it’s led to me to where I am today.
4:504 minutes, 50 secondsThat is amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.
4:534 minutes, 53 secondsI mean you know Tim and I we built Court Reserve but it took us 10 years, right?
4:584 minutes, 58 secondsWe’re on our 10th year and so you obviously know the grind of days and nights and weekends of and everything.
5:045 minutes, 4 secondsSo, well, now tell me the process. Uh, I heard that there’s a story about the first box that you tried to use to recycle. Tell me a little bit about that.
5:145 minutes, 14 secondsYeah, 100%. So, so that that first uh sticker that I ordered, I stuck it on a cardboard recycling bin. I set it out at
5:225 minutes, 22 secondsmy local park that we would play at every day. And I I reached out to the parks and wreck. Uh they said, “Yep, go ahead and place it there.” And Florida
5:305 minutes, 30 secondsweather conditions didn’t allow for that one to last more than a couple of days.
5:345 minutes, 34 secondsSo I then went to uh a local pickle ball tournament. I made some hats. I did a little bit of fundraising and I bought
5:425 minutes, 42 secondsthe first kind of outdoor weatherproof recycling bin, which is this big bright green plastic recycling bin. Um,
5:495 minutes, 49 secondseveryone that bought a hat from the tournament saw me post that I got a um, the new weatherproof bin because that’s kind of the story I was selling. The
5:585 minutes, 58 secondshats weren’t very pretty at all. Um, and they were all like, “Wow, you did it so quick.” It was within like the matter of
6:046 minutes, 4 secondstwo or three days that once I had kind of that model of these plastic recycling bins, I then started reaching out to other clubs, other local facilities. Um,
6:146 minutes, 14 secondsand every time I’d ask one facility and I’d get a yes, I would ask them for a couple more contacts. So, we just continued compounding that way. We then
6:216 minutes, 21 secondspartnered with one of those um, nonprofit companies I’d mentioned earlier, the Repickle Project. And then pretty much overnight, we were recycling
6:286 minutes, 28 secondsand collecting from over 70 facilities across I think it was seven states at the time. And now we’re up to 10 states
6:376 minutes, 37 secondsand over 80 facilities. And um it’s it’s a it’s been a fun journey so far. Like you said, the grind is is what it is.
6:466 minutes, 46 secondsAnd speaking of grinding, the actual process includes grinding up the balls and uh to turn them back into new ones, but we can get a little into that later.
6:546 minutes, 54 secondsNo, I want to hear about it. That’s a really cool process because Yeah. I mean Tim and I, we also own a pickle ball facility here in St. Augustine, Florida.
7:017 minutes, 1 secondThat’s where we live. And um I mean we’re a twocourt facility and we have a basket, a laundry basket that people
7:097 minutes, 9 secondstake their crack balls and they put it in the laundry basket and then they write their name on it before they you know slam dunk it and then once a month we pull that ball out. But again, I’m
7:187 minutes, 18 secondssitting here thinking as we are conversing like I wonder what our team does with that basket of balls after we pulled out the winner for that month, right? We have to be involved with you.
7:307 minutes, 30 secondsYeah, 100%. And I didn’t even know that you guys owned a facility. So, we have to get you guys a recycling bin.
7:357 minutes, 35 secondsYes. Yes. Yes. All right. So, tell me the process like Old Coast, if I want to get my facility to work with you guys, what does that look like? And then tell me what you do with all the recycling.
7:457 minutes, 45 secondsYeah. Yeah. 100%. So when uh when we first started and we’re setting out bins locally um we we also started posting on
7:537 minutes, 53 secondssocial media and a couple of the videos went viral and we had hundreds if not close to a thousand facilities across the country and even across the world
8:018 minutes, 1 secondlike multiple countries reaching out to us to get recycling bins at their facility. So as a startup founder and as you know this we had to figure out a way
8:108 minutes, 10 secondsto scale. So, we had to figure out how do we get these recycling bins out across the country to as many facilities as possible and how in the world do we
8:188 minutes, 18 secondsget these balls back to us? Because shipping balls is shipping air and volume costs money when you’re shipping.
8:258 minutes, 25 secondsSo, we came up with our sustainable facility program. And all that is to our partner facilities is a very simple $150
8:348 minutes, 34 secondsannual membership fee to be part of our program. Um, it’s what I tell a lot of our facilities is it’s a little marketing cost for them. They get to
8:428 minutes, 42 secondspromote the fact that they’re staying sustainable. Obviously, they get the recycling bin. We give them a little certificate of sustainability. Um, and
8:508 minutes, 50 secondswe send them all the branding materials, email, promotional template to send out to all their facility part or all their facility players, members, whatever it
8:588 minutes, 58 secondsis in your situation. um all of our members when we go into full production and launch our balls, which is very soon, and I I’ll touch on that in a
9:079 minutes, 7 secondssecond, um we’ll get a pretty hefty wholesale discount on our balls. And we’ve been able to um kind of start
9:149 minutes, 14 secondsrapidly on boarding facilities all across the country within the last month, month and a half of kind of soft launching that program. And um that’s
9:239 minutes, 23 secondsthat’s pretty much the whole rundown. So when when these balls are or when you fill up your recycling bin, we have found the most affordable way to get
9:319 minutes, 31 secondsthese balls back to us. It’s in a big poly mailing bag. We give all of our partner facilities all of the instructions and the the design of the
9:409 minutes, 40 secondsprogram is when the bin fills up, we we found the right size bag that fits the exact amount of balls that fit in our
9:479 minutes, 47 secondsrecycling bins. It’s about 200 balls. We have all of our partner facilities and like our shipping portal software. They
9:559 minutes, 55 secondslog on, it takes 30 seconds to a minute to purchase a shipping label. They print the label, stick it on the poly mailing
10:0210 minutes, 2 secondsbag, and it comes straight back to our uh reprocessing facility. Now, in the words of reprocessing, we grind the
10:0910 minutes, 9 secondsplastic. Well, actually, we first wash the plastic to get rid of any contaminants. We then grind it down into little plastic shreds. Those plastic
10:1810 minutes, 18 secondsshreds then get pulverized into a powder and that powder is essentially raw material. Now, it’s not virgin plastic.
10:2510 minutes, 25 secondsIt’s all recycled plastic, these old pickle balls, but that powder is what they use in the rotational molding process. So, what you would see in a general Franklin X40, for example. We
10:3410 minutes, 34 secondsthen send it out to our uh manufacturing partner who uh uses the same molds and the the same processes as those main
10:4210 minutes, 42 secondsbrands and they remake them. They drill the holes. We can do custom logos on them. We can do our logos on them and
10:4910 minutes, 49 secondsthey send them back to us and that’s what will be available for the market to purchase and for our partner facilities to purchase at a at a pretty hefty
10:5810 minutes, 58 secondswholesale discount. Um, now speaking of full production, two weeks ago we just sent out uh our largest
11:0711 minutes, 7 secondsbatch of plastic. It was about 500 pounds to get remanufactured and we should be getting back around 7,000 units within the next month, two months.
11:1611 minutes, 16 secondsUm, and we we’re actually going to be starting a pre-order very very shortly.
11:2211 minutes, 22 secondsUh, actually when I’m back from this trip. Um, and and we’re really excited to see the see the reaction and see um
11:2911 minutes, 29 secondssee what our players and clubs think of it.
11:3211 minutes, 32 secondsThat’s amazing because I mean I just think about the players at our club here in St. Augustine. They’re just such a great community and they support each other and they take care of each other.
11:4211 minutes, 42 secondsThey’re always willing to like participate in our local leagues and tournaments. And I mean, imagine them being able to know that they
11:4911 minutes, 49 secondsparticipated in the making of a new ball. We could get it logoed with old coast pickle ball on it and then they could play with recycled. I mean, that’s just like full story. That’s amazing.
12:0012 minutesExactly. And and we did a like a prototype run about four or five months ago. We got about 500 balls back and it
12:0812 minutes, 8 secondswas really just proof of concept. Does this work? Do these balls perform? Do they play um do they play like they should? And when we got them back, it my
12:1812 minutes, 18 secondsmission was send them out to as many head pros and facility managers across the country. Get them in the hands of players, get them in the hands of pros
12:2512 minutes, 25 secondsand give me your raw feedback. I don’t want to hear any sugarcoated anything.
12:2912 minutes, 29 secondsAnd nine out of ten people said they couldn’t tell a difference between our recycled balls and the main name brands, which is phenomenal.
12:3712 minutes, 37 secondsThat’s fantastic because again, like if the club can save money, I mean some clubs provide the balls for classes, programming, tournaments, things like
12:4612 minutes, 46 secondsthat. Um, and what a great way too because I’ve actually looked into like if we could get our logo on a pickle ball and I haven’t really been able to
12:5512 minutes, 55 secondsfind it. So, if you can like full story, full circle with the logo and return it to the club. I mean, I can’t imagine
13:0213 minutes, 2 secondsthat most pickle ball clubs who, you know, are really into branding and their local community, I mean, you could do it for specific tournaments,
13:1113 minutes, 11 secondsall kinds of great stuff. So, 100%. Yeah. Wow.
13:1413 minutes, 14 secondsAnd and we’re currently, so this this full or large size production run is going to be a very good tell um in terms
13:2113 minutes, 21 secondsof our current lead time for custom branded balls. Right now, as I said, it may be like a month or two, but as time
13:2913 minutes, 29 secondsgoes on, as we develop and continue scaling, that lead time should cut down.
13:3313 minutes, 33 secondsSo, for players or for facilities, tournaments, leagues, whatever it is that want custom branded balls, we’re really trying to make that like very
13:4213 minutes, 42 secondsaccessible. Even even some corporate brands, we we have um like a LOI letter of intent with the Ritz Carlton for a
13:4913 minutes, 49 secondslittle bulk order. Um and and we’re hoping to continue scaling that way as well as direct to consumer and to our facility partners.
13:5613 minutes, 56 secondsSo good. It’s so good. I’m just so happy for you guys. Thank you. Thank you.
14:0114 minutes, 1 secondYou know, I mean, and the bigger you get, I’m sure that this can become like a celebrity uh you know, famous people
14:0814 minutes, 8 secondswill love to do stuff like this. Are you currently working with anybody right now?
14:1314 minutes, 13 secondsYeah. So, we I don’t want to say working with, but we are somewhat endorsed by
14:2014 minutes, 20 secondsJamie Fox. Jamie Fox, if people don’t know, is a big pickle ball.
14:2614 minutes, 26 secondsHe owns a pickle ball paddle company and he actually has a little complex in his backyard of three or four courts out in Los Angeles.
14:3414 minutes, 34 secondsHe has a bounceback recycling bin in his backyard. He plays with our pickle balls and he loves them. Uh if people know his
14:4214 minutes, 42 secondsstory, he had a little bounce back in his career. Um a little health setback and he came back hard and strong and he loves the whole he loves the story, he
14:5114 minutes, 51 secondsloves the brand, he loves the recycling aspect. Um so celebritywise, we’ve got Jamie Fox up there.
14:5714 minutes, 57 secondsNo, I love it. Oh, what a great actor, too. Yeah, that’s so cool. Well, and when you get the invite to go play in his backyard, I mean, remember all your your friends, right?
15:0615 minutes, 6 secondsYeah, 100%. 100%. you’ll catch the invite.
15:1015 minutes, 10 secondsThat’s so cool. So, when you look a year down the road or five years down the road, what does that look like?
15:1715 minutes, 17 secondsYeah, that’s a fantastic question. So, um if you were to ask me this a couple of months ago, just to be candid, I would have said we’re going to be bringing manufacturing to the US,
15:2515 minutes, 25 secondshopefully have our own facility, but as we did some more research and the the labor cost of manufacturing these balls
15:3215 minutes, 32 secondsin the US is unrealistic for the quality that we want to produce. So now it’s really streamlined the whole process to have all of the reprocessing under one
15:4115 minutes, 41 secondsroof here in the United States, which should be happening within the next five to six months. We want to be able to scale our recycling service to as many
15:4915 minutes, 49 secondsfacilities as possible because I mean our core mission is turn pickle ball, fastest growing sport, into the world’s
15:5515 minutes, 55 secondsfirst sustainable sport. And that’s really the core mission behind what we’re doing. So get as many facilities
16:0216 minutes, 2 secondsonto our program as possible. We have recycling bins out. We’re getting the closed loop system where we’re then able to push these recycled balls out. So
16:1116 minutes, 11 secondspeople are playing with that full closed loop system as we were talking about.
16:1416 minutes, 14 secondsNow that’s as you say 6 to 12 month vision. I sincerely believe within 3 to 5 years of this um with enough social
16:2316 minutes, 23 secondsproof and enough players playing with the ball that we could potentially be the ball of pickle ball, the ball of the PPA. we could be the ball of the
16:3116 minutes, 31 secondspickleball World Cup, the big tournaments. And um I don’t think it’s unrealistic. I think it’s going to be a game of social proof and a game of
16:3916 minutes, 39 secondsscale. Um and as the sport grows and continues to grow, there’s going to be more waste inevitably. Right now it’s
16:4716 minutes, 47 secondswe’re looking at around 800,000 lbs of plastic waste every year. And those are numbers that I found when I first started this thing, which was a year
16:5516 minutes, 55 secondsago. So if I were to take a guess now that 800,000 is probably closer to 900,000 you know tracing up to the million
17:0417 minutes, 4 secondsnumber um and in three to five years that could be one and a half million pounds every single year. So, as the word gets out there and the mission
17:1117 minutes, 11 secondsspreads, I think that there really is a um there’s going to be a pressure on the sport to to stop wasting all of this
17:1917 minutes, 19 secondsplastic and what can we re reuse it for and what else other than turn them back into pickle balls, right?
17:2717 minutes, 27 secondsAgreed. I mean, I think it’s fantastic that this I mean, you going to school, you know, in an entrepreneurial, you
17:3417 minutes, 34 secondsknow, college program and now look at this. What do you think is something that maybe you didn’t think about
17:4217 minutes, 42 secondsbefore? Like what is a year ago when you were still in school and this idea was just turnurning, you know, what’s
17:4917 minutes, 49 secondssomething that you’ve learned that you didn’t even have any earthly idea about?
17:5417 minutes, 54 secondsSo, I’m going to take it back to when I was 12 years old. Um, so when I was 12, I started my first business. It was a
18:0318 minutes, 3 secondslittle gadgets and phone accessory business. If if you remember the fidget spinner craze, um I kind of brought that to my middle school soccer club and
18:1218 minutes, 12 secondssurrounding middle schools. I kind of built a little business where it it was little at the time. It felt it felt big
18:2018 minutes, 20 secondsat the time, but it was little looking back on it. I had a couple people at different schools and soccer clubs that were selling these gadgets and phone accessories for me. And when I first
18:2918 minutes, 29 secondsstarted, I would make them out of skateboard bearings and a hot glue gun and marbles. When I ran out of skateboard bearings, my dad actually
18:3718 minutes, 37 secondssaid, “Look at China.” And I had never heard of the whole Chinese commerce or
18:4418 minutes, 44 secondsanything along those lines. And then I found these great deals from what we now know as AliExpress, Alibaba, those types
18:5118 minutes, 51 secondsof places. Now, fast forward 10 years later, I’m 21, 22 years old. And now I have to talk to these manufacturers that
18:5918 minutes, 59 secondsare out overseas in in Asia and China and Vietnam. and the communication barrier and speaking with building
19:0819 minutes, 8 secondsrelationships, making the right connections and negotiating with these manufacturers overseas.
19:1519 minutes, 15 secondsIt’s a little tricky. You know, once you once you get there, once you build the relationship, it’s all good. Um, but there’s definitely a language barrier.
19:2219 minutes, 22 secondsThere’s definitely a communication barrier. But, um, we’re now in amazing standing with our current manufacturer.
19:3019 minutes, 30 secondsI got I got a Christmas card from her um this this past year. Um and I think that was one of the trickier things. The the
19:3819 minutes, 38 secondswhole supply chain and everything is is obviously um a big challenge. It took me a while to kind of come up with the whole nationwide recycling program and
19:4619 minutes, 46 secondshow we’re going to scale and get balls back for the most affordable rate. Um, but at large
19:5319 minutes, 53 secondsI think the the communication and manufacturing with the overseas partners was was definitely a little bit of a challenge.
20:0020 minutesThat’s a great story actually. Um, what are you looking most forward to in the next 60 or 90 days? I mean, we can look
20:0720 minutes, 7 secondsa year out, but like in the next three months, you just graduated college. You have a business booming right now. What do you What are you going to do in the
20:1420 minutes, 14 secondsnext 60 to 90 days? So, as I like briefly mentioned earlier, we just sent out our largest batch of plastic. Um,
20:2220 minutes, 22 secondsit’s actually only our second batch of plastic that we sent out. And I’m so excited to get this pre-order rolling,
20:2920 minutes, 29 secondshave the ability to have players like show their continued support and love in a way of
20:3620 minutes, 36 secondspurchasing our recycled balls and scaling this thing nationwide, continuing to scaling. As I said, we’re already in 10 states and within the next
20:4520 minutes, 45 seconds90 days, I could see us being in 20 25 states. Um, and in the next 90 days, we should be we should have these balls
20:5320 minutes, 53 secondsback and we should be starting to get them out. Um, you know, we’re dealing with all the nitty-gritty packaging, design, and fulfillment and everything
21:0021 minutesright now. And it’s um it’s a lot of learning curves and it’s a lot of amazing lessons, but that’s what you’re
21:0721 minutes, 7 secondsin for when you when you start your own thing. And um it’s it’s been an incredibly valuable experience. I know I mean I’ve only been out of school for
21:1621 minutes, 16 secondstwo weeks now, but I’ve I’ve been doing this for the last year. And kind of the cliche thing that people say is you’re going to learn more in the first six months out of out of college doing
21:2421 minutes, 24 secondswhatever it is you’re doing than you do in your last four years. Um and in the last year, I’ve I’ve learned a ton.
21:3221 minutes, 32 secondsThat’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with me today on Unscripted. If people, if clubs, if facilities, if they want to find out
21:3921 minutes, 39 secondsmore about you, how do they get a hold of you?
21:4221 minutes, 42 secondsYeah. So, on um if if facilities want to start recycling with us, get a recycling bin, they can go straight to our website. It’s just bouncebackpickle.com.
21:5221 minutes, 52 secondsThere’s a order recycling bin form.
21:5421 minutes, 54 secondsThat’s the simplest way to start the whole process. Um and that’s that’s the easiest way. We also have social media
22:0222 minutes, 2 secondsbounceback pickle on everything. Um, and we we are incredibly excited for for
22:0922 minutes, 9 secondsworking with you guys, getting um getting all of your current facilities involved, and um yeah, I’m just really
22:1622 minutes, 16 secondslooking forward to to continue scaling this thing and giving every cracked ball a second life, as I like to say.
22:2622 minutes, 26 secondsThat’s a great mic drop right there. All right, my friend. Well, thank you again, Ashley. Thank you. This is a lot of fun.
22:3322 minutes, 33 secondsThanks [music] for listening to this podcast. If you’d like to learn more about how Court Reserve became the go-to club management software for racket
22:4122 minutes, 41 seconds[music] and paddle sport clubs, come say hello over on our website. There’s a link in the show notes.
BounceBack built the program to be as easy as possible for facilities to run. Here’s how it works:
The program is launching with a limited pilot cohort so BounceBack can keep service quality high as it scales, with a waitlist for facilities that want to join the next wave.
BounceBack was built to get ahead of that, and CourtReserve is helping bring the program to facilities that want to be part of the solution.
“Our clubs care about more than court time. They care about the communities and the places they play in,” said Ashley Owens, Co-Founder of CourtReserve. “BounceBack gives facilities a real way to cut waste, and it gives them something real to share with their members. Helping a young founder like Dillon scale a great idea is the kind of partnership we want more of.”
“Every cracked ball tossed in the trash was a problem nobody had solved yet,” said Dillon Rosenthal, Founder and CEO of BounceBack Pickle. “Partnering with CourtReserve puts our program in front of thousands of facilities at once. That is how we turn a good idea into a real dent in pickleball’s waste problem.”
Facilities interested in the BounceBack recycling program can learn more by contacting the CourtReserve team.
CourtReserve powers racquet and paddle sports clubs across North America. From tennis and pickleball to padel, we help facilities create spaces where everyone can play, belong, and grow. Trusted by 2,300+ clubs and 6 million players, our comprehensive platform simplifies reservations, memberships, communication, payments, and more — all in one place. Founded in 2016 by club owners Ashley and Tim Owens, CourtReserve was built to help facilities scale smarter, strengthen community, and deliver better player experiences.
BounceBack Pickle is the first closed-loop recycling system for pickleballs. The company partners with clubs, facilities, and parks to collect used and cracked balls, reprocess the plastic, and remanufacture it into new pickleballs that play like the originals, without sending more plastic to the landfill. Founded by Dillon Rosenthal, BounceBack is on a mission to keep the sport sustainable without sacrificing performance. Learn more at bouncebackpickle.com.
