Major League Pickleball Challenger Level free-agency draft selections and updated rosters
Last Edited
Mar 03 2025
Category
News
With the 2025 Major League Pickleball Premier Level free-agency draft in the books, it was the Challenger Level teams who rounded out their rosters Monday.
In case you missed the news from last fall: The Kitchen is now running one of the MLP Challenger Level teams -- the newly rebranded Nashville Chefs.
A reminder about a couple things: Both the Premier Level and Challenger Level drafts are operated by a dynamic bidding process -- using draft points -- for each selection spot. This gives teams the chance to utilize whatever bidding strategy they see fit in order to build the best full roster.
With Premier Level rosters expanding to six players this year, the remaining eligible player pool was made up of a lot of up-and-coming players looking to make a name for themselves in 2025. But it was the veterans who ended up getting most of the attention from teams.
Challenger Level selections
- Bay Area Breakers: Eric Roddy, 9K draft points. The Nashville Chefs were also active in the bidding for this spot.
- Nashville Chefs: Anderson Scarpa, 8K. The Florida Smash were also bidding. It was surprising that Scarpa wasn't selected in the Premier Level draft as a bench player. He'll be one of the top men's players in Challenger.
- Nashville Chefs: Marshall Brown, 7K. He has plenty of MLP experience under his belt.
- Las Vegas Night Owls: James Delgado, 6K. Will be playing his first year in MLP.
- Florida Smash: Sarah Ansboury, 5K. Brooklyn was the only other team bidding on this pick. Brings veteran experience.
- Florida Smash: Cason Campbell, 3K. The California Black Bears have been somewhat active on a couple picks but not willing to spend more than 2K at this point.
- Brooklyn Aces: Stefan Auvergne, 2K.
- California Black Bears: Stephen Madonia, 1K.
- Nashville Chefs: Michelle Esquivel, 1K.
- Bay Area Breakers: Wyatt Stone, 1K.
- Bay Area Breakers: Lingwei Kong, 1K.
Updated rosters
Bay Area Breakers
Existing roster: Allyce Jones
Added: Eric Roddy (#1), Wyatt Stone (#10), Lingwei Kong (#11)
Brooklyn Aces
Existing roster: Daniel De La Rosa, Mariana Humberg, Andrea Koop
Added: Stefan Auvergne (#7)
California Black Bears
Existing roster: Rafa Hewett, Lina Padegimaite, Layne Sleeth
Added: Stephen Madonia (#8)
Florida Smash
Existing roster: Martina Frantova, Travis Rettenmaier
Added: Sarah Ansboury (#5), Cason Campbell (#6)
Las Vegas Night Owls
Existing roster: Brooke Buckner, Pablo Tellez, Chao Yi “Zoey” Wang
Added: James Delgado (#4)
Nashville Pandas
Existing roster: Ewa Radzikowska
Added: Anderson Scarpa (#2), Marshall Brown (#3), Michelle Esquivel (#9)
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