FROM THE COURT TO THE COAST

MEET NEW TEAM OCEAN CAPTAIN, LEE WHITWELL

We’re thrilled to welcome pickleball champion Lee Whitwell as our newest Team Ocean Captain! She is the top-ranked senior female professional pickleball player in the world, and we’re excited to work together to protect our ocean. Keep reading to learn more about her unique perspective and interest in ocean health!

Q: Pickleball and ocean conservation aren’t worlds people commonly link together. What unique perspective do you bring to ocean conservation as a pickleball athlete?

A: Honestly, that disconnect is exactly the problem – and the opportunity. Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the world, which means we have millions of new players showing up to courts that sit beside coastlines, lakes, and waterways they probably haven’t thought twice about. I’m Gibraltar-born. The Mediterranean was my backyard before a pickleball court ever was. So I’ve never seen sport and ocean as separate worlds – they’ve always shared the same geography for me. But here’s something most people don’t think about – pickleball is played with a plastic ball. A single use plastic ball. We go through them constantly, and they end up somewhere. We’ve all seen the documentaries. We know where plastic ends up. It ends up in the ocean. It ends up in the ecosystem. It ends up in places it should never be. So as a pickleball player and an ocean lover, I have a choice – I can be part of the problem or part of the solution. That’s not a hard decision for me. What I bring is a community that’s massive, engaged, and ready to be pointed at something that matters. We just needed someone to make the connection out loud.

Q: You’ve said that when you’re deep in the tank and things aren’t going well, breathing always has to be primary. Has there ever been a moment where you visited our ocean—which produces every second breath we take—to recenter yourself after a match?

A: There’s something about standing at the edge of the ocean that puts a scoreline in its place immediately. It doesn’t matter which coastline – I’ve felt it everywhere. After a hard loss, sometimes after a hard win, I find the water. No phone, no debrief, no one asking what went wrong. Just that horizon. It’s easy as a competitive athlete to live inside the bubble – tunnel vision on rankings, results, the next match. The ocean is the fastest way I know to remember that there is an entire world out there that is vastly bigger than any of that. It just keeps moving, completely indifferent to your scoreline. That perspective is the reset I’ve needed more times than I can count. The fact that it produces every second breath we take and we’re still treating it like an afterthought – that genuinely keeps me up at night. Seventy-one percent of the earth’s surface is water. We are at least fifty percent water ourselves. The ocean isn’t out there somewhere separate from us – it is us. It connects every single one of us, whether we know it or not.

Q: What drives your personal interest to improve the sport and our world as a whole?

A: I’ve had a front row seat to what sport does for people – not just physically, but in ways that are harder to measure. Community. Belonging. Purpose. I’ve also had moments in my own life where everything felt uncertain, and sport – and the natural world around it – was what held me together. That’s not nothing. That’s everything. So when I look at what pickleball is becoming and what the ocean is facing, I see the same thing in both: something extraordinary that we could very easily take for granted until it’s gone. I’m not interested in that outcome for either.

Q: Pickleball has the amazing ability to bring people from all walks of life together. How do you think we can bring that incredible community together to care about our ocean?

A: Meet people where they already are. Pickleball players are already outside. They’re already breathing salt air, walking to courts near water, travelling to tournaments in coastal cities. We don’t need to convert anyone – we just need to make the ask while they’re standing in the right place. A beach cleanup after a tournament. An Ocean Conservancy table at a club event. A coach who mentions it between drills. The pickleball community shows up when someone they trust says ‘this matters.’ I’m that person willing to say it. The ocean has given me perspective, grounding, and some of my best memories – summer days on the beaches in Gibraltar, the kind of childhood moments that stay with you forever. That’s not abstract for me. That’s personal. So you’d better believe that when the ocean is in trouble, I am going to speak up. I’ve never been afraid of an uncomfortable conversation when something matters to me, and the stakes here are too high for silence.

“Every tournament, every adventure, every community I’ve been fortunate enough to experience has been connected to coastlines, lakes, and oceans that deserve our respect and protection. We can’t keep taking these places for granted. They’re where we play, where we gather, where we recharge — and they’re worth fighting for.”

—Lee Whitwell, Professional Pickleball Player

Q: Can you share your favorite ocean memory with us?
A: I can’t pick just one. The ocean has been woven through my entire life. I grew up in Gibraltar in a beach culture – summers spent with family and friends where the beach wasn’t just a backdrop, it was where life actually happened. Where real conversations took place, where life lessons got learned, where we figured things out together in the way you only can when you’re sitting in the sun with nowhere to be. My first job was as an ocean lifeguard in Gibraltar. Those quiet mornings before the crowds arrived – just you, a cup of coffee, sand under your feet, and that horizon stretching out in front of you – were some of the most purely magical moments of my life. Getting to watch the sea life in Gibraltar’s waters up close, to see that world existing completely on its own terms, changed something in me early. And then as an adult, getting to experience the ocean through Angela’s eyes – my partner, who is a conservation photographer – that’s been priceless in a completely different way. She sees things I would walk straight past. She makes you slow down and actually look. Between the child who grew up beside it and the woman who now gets to rediscover it through someone who has dedicated her life to protecting it – the ocean has given me everything. So when it needs something back, there’s only one answer.

Q: For fans looking to follow your lead, what’s your game plan for protecting our oceans? You’ve always played to win; how do we win for the Ocean?

A: Same way you win on court – you don’t try to fix everything at once. You pick one thing, you do it consistently, and you build from there. Start with your local coastline. Join a cleanup. Follow Ocean Conservancy and actually read what they share. Choose differently when you’re at the shop – less single use plastic, full stop. And then bring one person with you. That’s it. One person. The pickleball community grew from nothing to millions because people kept bringing one person. We can do the same thing for the ocean. We just have to decide it’s worth playing for.