It’s official: The Major League Pickleball franchise formerly known as the Pandas is now the Nashville Chefs. And the team, which is operated by The Kitchen, is looking to make a serious run at the Challenger Level title this season.

The Kitchen took over in a management role for the team in the fall of 2024 and is now overseeing marketing, operations and sponsorship sales.

The first order of business for 2025: Filling out the team’s roster via the Challenger Level free-agency draft and unveiling the new logo and team colors.

Chefs General Manager Jared Paul (founder of The Kitchen) and Assistant General Manager Caleb Hodder elected to keep Ewa Radzikowska as the lone holdover from last year’s season-ending roster, leaving three spots needing to be filled in the draft.

The team was active in the dynamic bidding for the No. 1 overall selection, but was ultimately outbid by the Bay Area Breakers, who bid 9,000 draft points and selected Eric Roddy with the top pick.

That didn’t have an impact on Nashville’s decision making, though, as the team won the bid for the No. 2 spot with 8,000 draft points and selected Anderson Scarpa – the team’s top choice going into the draft.

The Chefs also won the bid for the No. 3 pick at 7,000 draft points and selected Marshall Brown, then picked up Michelle Esquivel with the No. 9 pick for 1,000 draft points.

“We’re really excited about who we chose and we feel like we got the best of the best,” Hodder said. “We spent more money in the challenger draft than any other team and it’s because we really wanted to get the people we picked.”

We caught up with the players last week to get their thoughts on how the team came together and get their outlook on the upcoming season.

MEET THE CHEFS

Anderson Scarpa

Resides: Charleston, South Carolina

Age: 31

DUPR: 6.373 doubles, 6.053 singles

Plays: Right handed

Past MLP teams: California Black Bears, Las Vegas Night Owls, Arizona Drive (sub), Texas Ranchers (sub), Atlanta Bouncers (sub), New York Hustlers (sub).

Sports background: Played Division I tennis at Mercer University in Georgia, then was a Graduate Assistant Coach for the team for two years after his playing career. “It’s funny because people automatically think I didn’t play tennis because I have such odd technique in pickleball, but I actually had a pretty good tennis career,” he said.

Scarpa is an MLP veteran and has shown an ability to mesh with a wide variety of playing styles in the team format over the past few seasons.

Many pro pickleball observers and pundits thought there was a good chance he would get picked in the Premier Level free-agency draft, and while he was hopeful of that as well, he said nothing surprises him in MLP anymore given his experience playing for so many different teams.

And it didn’t bother him because now he gets to be one of the top dogs on the men’s side in Challenger rather than a bench player for a Premier Level team.

“I feel like I can come in and prove myself and with the team we have I feel like we can do something special,” he said. “We all have to show up and perform obviously, but I like where the team is at to start the season.”

He’s also eager to dispel the notion that his game doesn’t have a lot of upside.

“I’m on court 20-24 hours a week, plus in the gym, and I think I’m only getting better,” he said of his outlook for 2025.

Scarpa mostly trains in the Charleston area with Joey Farias, Jake Kusmider and other high-level amateur players, and occasionally travels to Arizona to train with Greg Dow, Augie Ge and other PPA Tour pros in the area.

He’s played tournaments in the past with Brown and Radzikowska and played against Esquivel several times, so he said he’s familiar with the rest of the team and feels their game styles can mesh well. He and Brown went 3-1 in the lone MLP event they played together as members of the California Black Bears in 2023.

Prior to turning pro Scarpa worked for a family business after college resurfacing outdoor tennis courts, pickleball courts and other outdoor sports surfaces.

“That’s how I discovered pickleball, because we started doing a lot of conversions of tennis courts to pickleball courts and I thought it looked interesting and was something I could probably dominate at,” he said.

He has a 2-year-old daughter and a baby boy coming in September.

Michelle Esquivel

Resides: Estero, Florida – originally from Orange County, California

Age: 38

DUPR: 5.62 Doubles, 5.48 Singles

Plays: Right handed

Past MLP teams: Florida Smash, Utah Black Diamonds, California Black Bears (sub), Chicago Slice (sub)

Sports background: Played college tennis at Concordia University in Irvine, California, then coached at Orange Coast College and Cypress College, both community colleges in southern California.

Esquivel said she was hopeful she would be selected in the Challenger Level free-agency draft because she loves the team environment and has had success in MLP in the past.

“I’m super thankful for the opportunity and I love our team,” she said. “We have so much experience as a group so I’m really pumped up about it.”

Esquivel has played with Marshall Brown a few times in the past, and they played the PPA Tour Cape Coral Open last weekend, beating Pablo Tellez and Chao Yi Wang in the first round before falling to Riley Newman and Martina Frantova (11-8 in the third game) in the second round.

“I feel like we play so well together,” she said. “An MLP title is the only title I don’t have, so I’m really eager to get one and I feel like we have a really good chance.”

Esquivel currently lives in Estero, Florida, and trains often with Rob Cassidy, Martina Frantova, Zane Ford and Brendan Long.

In the early days of her pickleball career, she was focused on growing the sport with the hope of it one day becoming a collegiate sport. That was in the mid to late 2010s, and eventually she became a touring pro because that was the best way for her to be more involved in pickleball.

“I don’t just play professionally – I try to engage with the pickleball community a lot and I teach a lot,” she said. “I just love doing that stuff because I care about the future of the sport.”

Marshall Brown

Resides: Auburn, Alabama

Age: 30

DUPR: 6.175 Doubles, 6.319 Singles

Plays: Right Handed

Past MLP teams: California Black Bears

Sports background: Played junior tennis but became more interested in golf later in high school and college.

Brown has played with every other player on the team at one point over the past several years and had success with each of them. In addition to the recent success with Esquivel and 2023 MLP success with Scarpa, he also paired with Radzikowska early in both of their careers and made several good runs in multiple APP events with her.

“I’m thrilled with where I ended up,” he said. “For a Challenger team, this is a really good team. It’s been fun playing with Michelle lately – she’s a fierce competitor.”

While he has mostly played the left side in men’s doubles, when he paired with Scarpa in MLP in 2023 he played the right and felt comfortable with that setup. But with the league moving to side-out scoring this season, he said he felt like they would have an opportunity to mix it up at times and give teams different looks.

He trains mostly with Rafa Hewitt and a few other high-level amateurs in the Auburn area.

“Pickleball has been an incredible outlet for competitiveness and the social aspect is great, too,” he said. “Being able to compete at a high level again has been so much fun.”

Brown also runs a window and gutter cleaning business in Auburn – making use of his accounting degree – and has a 2-year-old son and a baby girl coming in May.

Ewa Radzikowska

Resides: Atlanta, Georgia – originally from Poland

Age: 45

DUPR: 6.02 Doubles, 5.90 Singles.

Plays: Right Handed

Past MLP teams: Bay Area Breakers, SoCal Hard Eights, Frisco Pandas/Nashville Chefs

Sports background: Played tennis at Oklahoma State and continued to play tennis competitively after college.

As a multiple-time MLP champion with the Bay Area Breakers and SoCal Hard Eights, Radzikowska said getting to play MLP is her “favorite part of the season.”

Having played mixed doubles with Brown and Scarpa in the past, she said she feels comfortable playing with either.

“I really enjoyed playing with both of them,” she said. “Marshall is one of those guys where if I missed or went for a shot that I shouldn’t have, he was always like, ‘Hey, all good, let’s keep on going.’ He always made me feel confident, which is so important in mixed.”

While the level of MLP continues to get tougher every season, she said she feels good about the team’s experience level compared to some of the other teams in Challenger.

“I feel like the team format makes all of us dig a little bit deeper because we are players who really care about MLP,” she said. “The pressure is on, so being in those situations and knowing what it feels like definitely helps, and I feel like that’s a huge advantage for our team. People are going to have to beat us – we’re not going to give games away.”

Radzikowska trains in the Atlanta area with senior pro Angela Simons and former Hiesman trophy winner turned pickleball pro Danny Wuerffel.

She said she stopped playing tennis competitively when she was about 35, then found pickleball through some tennis friends and “fell in love.”