The pickleball Hall of Fame class of 2026 has been announced, and alongside three players, two women who built the refereeing system from nothing were selected in the contributor category. US site Pickleball.com reported on September 14 that the two are Linda Raymon and Marcia Freso. Without rules for judging matches and people trained to apply them, tournaments do not happen, and the two built that obvious foundation in the sport's earliest days. For Japan, where tournaments are multiplying and going international, how the unglamorous work of officiating was put together is something the next wave of organizers should know.
The two women who wrote the first referee handbook
A Hall of Fame is usually thought of as an honor for players, but the 2026 class has extra weight because two contributors built the sport's infrastructure. Star records look glamorous, but those records only stand because referees called the matches fairly. Raymon and Freso belong to the generation that stopped leaving officiating to volunteer goodwill and turned it into a system of training and certification.
As in Vietnam, where a tournamentbrought in AI-assisted line calling, calls are now reinforced by technology. Even so, without standards for those calls and a base that trains people, the machines do not function either. The work of these two was that base itself.
The training model Linda Raymon built over 25 years
Raymon has spent more than 25 years growing pickleball and, as a USA Pickleball board member, led the development of training and the refereeing system. With her husband Lynn, she is credited with creating the sport's first structured referee training program, manual and officiating guidelines. In short, she wrote the prototype for the referee education used around the world today.
A rulebook on its own does not produce referees. Without material that teaches how to apply it on an actual court, nobody gets trained. What Raymon built was the practical layer between the rules and their use. The more tournaments there are, the more that standardized training is worth.
Marcia Freso trained referees in five countries
Freso was one of the first 10 USA Pickleball certified referees. With her husband Byron, she shaped the role at a time when it was not yet established as a profession, and taught referees not only in the US but in India, China, Belgium, England and Vietnam. That her teaching reached Asia and Europe shows how the sport's internationalization ran alongside the work of building a base of officials.
The fact that her teaching took in major Asian countries such as Vietnam, India and China is not unrelated to players in Japan. As chances to work alongside referees from across Asia at international events increase, trace the shared language of officiating back and it leads to this early training.
The very idea of recognizing refereeing as a profession was new at the time. Players can sharpen their own technique, but the quality of officiating can only be guaranteed by a system. By traveling from country to country and increasing the number of certified referees, Freso created the conditions for the sport to be played by the same rules across borders. When a Japanese tournament welcomes players from Asia, it quietly benefits from that.
The 2026 class: three players and two contributors
| Division | Name | Main achievements |
|---|---|---|
| Player | Matt Wright | More than 460 career pro wins, while also working as a lawyer |
| Player | Lucy Kovalova | Titles in singles, doubles and mixed doubles; world No. 1 |
| Player | Dave Weinbach | Major titles in several divisions; a leading coach |
| Contributor | Linda Raymon | Created the first structured referee training, manual and officiating guidelines |
| Contributor | Marcia Freso | One of the first 10 certified referees; taught officiating in five countries |
Source: Pickleball.com (September 14).
How to bring the referee training model into Japanese tournaments
Tournaments and taster sessions are starting up all over Japan, and players aremoving into teaching rolesas well. What needs building next is the layer of referees who judge them. The more tournaments fill their entry lists, the more the quality of an event depends on whether fair calls can be supplied consistently. The training model Raymon and her peers created is a starting point that saves Japan from designing one from scratch.
the international tournament where Japan reached the world semifinalsis the kind of stage where a single call decides the result. Raising playing standards and developing referees are two wheels of the same cart, and growing only one will not mature a tournament scene. The Hall of Fame shining a light on contributors strengthens the case for Japan to invest in officiating from here.
What happens at the ceremony on November 13
The ceremony runs over two days: a documentary screening on November 12, then the induction ceremony on the 13th at Gold Canyon Resort in Arizona. Alongside it runs a fund called The Keepers 100, in which 100 individuals and organizations each contribute $500 to preserve the sport's history. With record-keeping efforts included, the sport has reached the stage of valuing its own past.
The next thing organizers in Japan can do is train even one more referee at the tournament in front of them and write the procedure down. For now the overseas training systems can be followed, but sooner or later a manual suited to Japan's courts and climate will be needed. Differences between indoor and outdoor balls, local rules at each venue, how to run beginner tournaments: criteria grounded in the field can only be written in Japan. It is Japan's turn to retrace, at a different scale, what the two inductees did in the early days. Once referees are trained, tournaments become far easier to hold.
Sources
Pickleball.com「Pickleball Hall of Fame welcomes the Class of 2026」
