Aaron Sunstrum has been a big proponent of community-driven sports his entire adult life.

For years he participated in beach volleyball leagues, which gave him an outlet for his competitiveness, allowed him to meet new people and create a social network outside of his day job. It was a place he could go several nights a week to unplug and unwind.

“I really fell in love with the community aspect and the fitness component to it,” he said. “I loved getting to switch up the monotony of the work week to go plug into something that was fully administered on my behalf. I just showed up, got to hang out with some friends, eat, drink, socialize and play beach volleyball.”

When he discovered pickleball in 2022, he immediately noticed many of those same positive elements. Plus, learning a new sport offered a new challenge.

But it didn’t take long for him to notice that the sport, while popular, lacked the same organization and structure that made beach volleyball so appealing. It required more effort to get a group together, figure out what time worked for everybody, find a place, book a court, or risk going to a public park where the courts might be packed. In beach volleyball, all that logistical work was done for him.

So in late 2023 he left the comfort and consistency of the consulting firm he partnered in building for 4 years and created Honcho Pickleball, a social, skill-based amateur pickleball league that organizes weekly matches at top-tier venues, allowing players to focus on improving their game, making new friends and finding community.

Learn more about how to join Honcho Pickleball leagues

Registration for late spring leagues opens April 6.

Use code "KITCHEN" at checkout for a discount off the price of registration.

The beginnings of Honcho

Sunstrum’s first experience with a pickleball league wasn’t what he was expecting. It was hosted at a local level in Houston, but the organization and administration wasn’t what he had come to expect through years of participating in beach volleyball leagues.

“There was no community aspect at all, no outside-the-lines experiences,” he said. “It felt extremely transactional, and I just remember thinking to myself, ‘I bet I could do this better myself.’”

After that experience, he got his own group of 20 best friends together and ran a small league off of a Google Sheet at a friend’s backyard court.

“I found that the league was so powerful and our friends really gravitated toward it,” Sunstrum said. “It was our opportunity during the week to spend time together. We’d all come out early, start the banter, hang out, play pickleball and hang out some more after that. So it just had me start to think that so many other people in pickleball or new to pickleball would benefit from that, not just my 20 friends.”

He set out to expand the league in the Houston area, and in their second “season” they had 150 players across multiple divisions, all through word of mouth. After that success, as part of his informal “Phase 1 Expansion” he took Honcho beyond Houston – to Austin, Dallas and Los Angeles – and quickly found that other communities were also eager to participate in Honcho leagues that brought the community together and allowed players to focus on what really mattered to them: Playing pickleball, building community and relationships and having fun.

“The inability for players to coordinate day, time, location and find a group of similar-level players is what prevents pickleball from being played more frequently,” Sunstrum said. “And so basically we administer the whole inside-the-lines gameplay and the outside-the-lines experience for you if you want to be part of the Honcho community. We manage all the administrative headache – you just show up, plug in and hang with your new crew weekly.”

How to get involved

Honcho now offers multiple types of beginner-friendly-and-up leagues at more than 70 facilities across the U.S. and also recently added locations in Canada. The 5-week registration window for the Late-Spring Season will be April 6-May 10, with Early Bird pricing available if you register in the first two weeks. The season itself will run from May 25-late July for all locations.

Find a location and register here -- Use code "KITCHEN" at checkout for a discount off the price of registration.

Rotating-Partner Ladder League (RPLL)

No Partner? No Problem! Join as an individual and each week you are paired with a foursome. Players rotate partners for a total of three games, with 3 different partner pairings – the top two players move up the ladder, the bottom two players move down the ladder, ensuring like-skilled and fair gameplay weekly!

- 8 weeks of rotating-partner match play.

“Pickleball has a very low barrier to entry, but one barrier it does have is some people aren’t able to call on a specific partner to commit to an 8-week league,” Sunstrum said. “With our ladder league, you don’t need a set partner, you're always playing people of a similar skill, and you're getting to play with and against new faces every single week. And so it's a very community-oriented and very social-friendly format.”

Same-Partner Doubles-League (SPDL)

Have a best friend or partner you want to play with the whole season? Join as a team and compete in your appropriate skillset division with a designated partner to become the Head Honcho of your division.

- 6 weeks of regular season play + a 2 week single-elimination style playoff.

- Weekly court costs included: Just show up and play.

- Head Honcho champions package: A chance to take home the stacked prize bundle featuring cash, sponsor gear, next-season entry, and your claim to the Head Honcho title.

- Perks & Benefits: High Quality Performance Shirt (female and male cuts) come with your league fees, weekly giveaways/raffles/drawings as well as weekly sponsor activations, access to an end-of-season Happy Hour, and more

Same-Partner Ladder-League (SPLL)

The Perfect Blend! Join as a team, regardless of your skill level, and based off weekly performance, you move up or down the ladder, ensuring like-skilled and fair gameplay every week. Built-In Self-Policed skill-based matchups, so regardless of you and your partner’s skillset, you have a home in the Honcho Community!

Tournaments and more

In addition to the 8-week leagues that run across 4-5 cycles throughout the year, Honcho has also partnered with JOOLA to host the Honcho Amateur Tour Powered By JOOLA, a tournament series that will make eight stops in 2026 across the country, with the second one happening in less than a month in Austin, Texas.

Find the tournament schedule here -- Use code "KITCHEN" at checkout for a discount off the price of registration.

Sunstrum said the tournaments bring the same community-first energy as the Honcho leagues, while offering players a premium and differentiated experience.

“It’s a very different approach than what has become an extremely saturated tournament space in today’s world,” he said. “We are really focused on the outside-the-lines experience, the vendors, the sponsors, the music, the festival atmosphere, raffles, drawings, giveaways – all those things that encourage people to stay around longer on site, as opposed to a traditional tournament that can feel very transactional.”

6 scheduled games: Every team gets at least six scheduled games. Make it to the finals and you can play up to 11.

High-energy event atmosphere: Music, vendors and fans keep the party going off the court.

Premium player swag: Custom Honcho Amateur Tour Performance T-shirt + a JOOLA Vision II backpack (for first 50-100 players each tour stop).

Unbeatable prize package: Take home a brand new JOOLA Pro IV paddle, JOOLA gift cards, sponsor bundles, medals and more.

Sunstrum also said Honcho is in the early stages of planning a local activation series, ecomm/merchandise offerings and a national championship that would bring medalists from Honcho leagues and tournaments together for a weeklong, large-scale tournament in a destination location.

“Ultimately we want to continue to cement ourselves as the largest amateur pickleball community & events provider across the nation, by offering multi-skillset, inclusive offerings to thousands of participants in a very structured and socially-oriented manner to allow people to play, improve and be a part of something bigger than themselves, regardless of where they are in the nation,” he said.