Anna Leigh Waters (born January 26, 2007) is an American professional

pickleball Pickleball is a racket or paddle sport in which two or four players use a smooth-faced paddle to hit a perforated, hollow plastic ball over a net until one side is unable to return the ball or commits a rule infraction. Pickleball is played i ...

player. As of March 2025, she had won 148 gold medals and was ranked No. 1 in the world for doubles,

mixed doubles Mixed doubles or mixed pairs is a form of mixed-sex sports that consists of teams of one man and one woman. This variation of competition is prominent in curling and racket sports, such as tennis, table tennis, and badminton (where it is known ...

, and singles by the Professional Pickleball Association. She was the youngest professional pickleball player in history at age 12, and is known for playing doubles on a team with her mother.

Early life

Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2007, Waters moved to Clinton, North Carolina, and lived there with her family until she was eight years old. In 2015 they relocated to Delray Beach, Florida, where Waters was a competitive

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

player.

Pickleball career

Waters began playing pickleball during a visit to her grandparents in

Allentown Allentown may refer to: Places * Allentown, California, now called Toadtown, California * Allentown, Georgia, a city in four counties in Georgia * Allentown, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Tazewell County * Allentown, New Jersey, a boroug ...

, Pennsylvania, in 2017. She played in her first tournament several months later and, at 10 years old, won a gold medal in Women’s Doubles. By 2019, at age 12, Waters became the youngest professional pickleball player in history. Since then Waters has won over one hundred tournaments in doubles, mixed doubles, and singles. Waters' coach and occasional doubles partner is her mother, Leigh Waters, a former

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...

tennis player at the

University of South Carolina The University of South Carolina (USC, SC, or Carolina) is a Public university, public research university in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, It is the flagship of the University of South Car ...

. They are the only mother-daughter team in professional pickleball. In 2022, Waters and her mother were in the first nationally televised pickleball match in history on

CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...

, at the Skechers Invitational Summer Championship in Los Angeles. Waters has also played exhibition style games with many pro athletes including swimmer

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, actor

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, boxer

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, golfers

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, and football players

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and

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. Waters is said to play with an aggressive style, characterized by strength and speed. She is sponsored by sportswear manufacturer

Fila Fila (; ) is a South Korean-owned athleisure brand headquartered in Seoul. The company was originally founded by Ettore and Giansevero Fila in 1911 in Coggiola, near Biella, Italy. Fila Korea acquired the brand in 2007 and launched its initial p ...

and Paddletek.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Waters, Anna Leigh 2007 births American sportswomen Living people American female pickleball players Sportspeople from Florida 21st-century American sportswomen