Breaking down the Anna Leigh Waters/Hayden Patriquin incident -- Who is at fault?

Alex Lantz

Director of Content

Last Edited

Apr 28 2025

Hayden Patriquin

What are we doing here, Hayden? You can't be calling your female opponent a "F***ing B****" under any circumstance. To his credit, he was asked about it by the announcers after the match and admitted he was wrong and apologized. (It's unclear as of Monday morning whether he has personally apologized to Waters).

"Some words were said that shouldn't have been said. It is what it is, it's the heat of the moment," he said. "... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it."

If I was to give Patriquin a slight pass it's for this reason: Sunday's incident is far from the first time somebody has called their opponent a "F***ing B****" in pro sports. That insult alone might be used 100 times in an NBA game and nobody bats an eye. But in most instances in sports it's men saying it to other men or women saying it to other women.

Pickleball's mixed-gender format requires everybody involved to be on a little bit better behavior than when they are playing against only their male or female counterparts. My guess is Patriquin plays most of his pickleball in practice against other men and calling his buddies a "F***ing B****" probably isn't out of the norm. But he has to know that there's a different line in mixed.

Anna Leigh Waters

Waters is far from innocent in all of this. She escalated tensions by charging after Patriquin as he walked to his team's bench, eventually making her way past a member of the St. Louis Shock support staff who found himself in an unfortunate situation by no fault of his own (more on him later).

Waters proceeded to yell in Patriquin's face and in anybody else's face who was nearby. Rarely in sports has it ended well when a player has gone into the opposing bench or dugout.

That shouldn't happen, and I don't blame the guy on the St. Louis Shock bench who tried to stop it from happening.

This incident raises an issue that some have complained about for years with MLP: That having the team benches on the same side of the court can lead to these sorts of disputes because the teams are just a few feet away from each other.

If the benches were across the court from each other, this whole fiasco probably never happens. Or at least a ref would be in the middle and would likely be able to keep Waters from going into the other team's bench.

New Jersey 5s staff

New Jersey 5s owner and GM Ryan Harwood is one of the most passionate non-players involved in Major League Pickleball. In most instances that's a good thing and he does a good job of getting the crowd engaged and just generally keeping the energy high.

But during Sunday's incident he and New Jersey 5s coach Leigh Waters (Anna Leigh's mom) unnecessarily interjected themselves and accused St. Louis Chief Operating Officer Andrew Haines of grabbing/shoving Anna Leigh, which further escalated things.

If you watch the video, that's simply not what happened. Haines just stepped in Waters' way as she tried to follow Patriquin to the bench, and she bumped into him multiple times, then yelled in his face before he eventually turned around and walked away.

As far as I can tell Haines was the only person involved on either team who was trying to keep things from getting more out of hand (until MLP head ref Courtney Johnson arrived on scene and broke things up).

The situation begs the question of whether owners/GMs/other support staff should be on the sideline to start with. In most other team sports the owners and GMs are watching from somewhere else, and in this case it only added more people with tempers to a chaotic scenario.

But having people like Harwood and St. Louis owner/GM Ross Chaifetz down on the court adds excitement and is a unique aspect of MLP. It would be a shame for that to go away.

Again, having the benches on the opposite side of the court probably solves this particular problem.

What happens now?

Just a few days into his tenure as Major League Pickleball Commissioner, Samin Odhwani has a decision to make on whether Patriquin, Waters or any other team staffers should be disciplined for their roles in the incident.

From a fan perspective, it would be less than ideal if Waters and Patriquin were suspended for any amount of time. They are two of the most exciting players in the league and fans love watching them.

Fine them whatever you need to in order to make sure they understand that they can't do what they did, tell the team owners to take it down a notch and let's carry on.

Based on an "official" statement MLP released Monday, that appears to be the direction the league went with this one.

A lot of people are asking for official league comment. So here we go:

1. ALW is obviously NOT a ******* *****. But she, clearly, is a bad ass and wants all the smoke. We respect that.
2. Players, please stay on your side of the court.
3. Players, please keep smack talk…
— Major League Pickleball (@MajorLeaguePB) April 28, 2025

I suspect Odhwani and other MLP officials aren't terribly upset about what happened. Fans seem to love the drama and now the next time St. Louis and New Jersey play each other it will be appointment viewing.

But it's a fine line the league has to balance: How do you make sure there's an element of extra-curricular activity that makes things interesting for fans, but also make sure that there isn't an actual fight on the sidelines where somebody could get injured.