By Steve Drumwright – Red Line Editorial
SAN DIEGO — Rachel Campagnolo is quietly becoming a force on the national pickleball scene.
About five years after transitioning from tennis to pickleball, Campagnolo had a banner performance at the 2025 USA Pickleball National Championships, held at the Barnes Tennis Center from November 15–23.
The resident of Los Gatos, California, won a pair of gold medals and a bronze in her four events.
“I see myself just getting more disciplined about it,” Campagnolo said. “It’s fun to look back a couple years ago. In fact, my brother-in-law commented this morning. He’s like, ‘Holy cow, you’re playing 3.5 a year ago and now you’re playing 4.0 and winning.’ So it’s fun to see yourself progress. It’s fun to see my husband, my friends progress through this journey together and we’re having a blast doing it.”
She made that statement following her second gold medal in 24 hours. This gold came via a decisive 15-5 triumph over Carmen Simpson of Encinitas, California, in the women’s singles 4.0 50-50-plus division.
A day earlier, Campagnolo won her first career gold at nationals in the women’s doubles 4.0 40-plus bracket, pairing with Erin Barger of Clovis, California, to fend off two other Californians, Marcela Guerra of Chula Vista and Maricela Janssen of Escondido, in a thrilling 16-14 championship match.
Campagnolo missed earning a medal twice, once barely. She and husband Greg lost the bronze in mixed doubles 4.0 40-plus, falling to Reine Steel of Weimar, California, and Jesse Colan of Sacramento 11-0, 11-4. Then in women’s doubles 4.5 40-plus, as Campagnolo and Cee Torkaman of San Jose lost their first two matches.
This success came after Campagnolo won a silver last year in women’s doubles 4.5 40-49 and dropped the bronze-medal match in women’s singles 5.0 19-49. In 2023, she didn’t medal in women’s doubles 3.5 or mixed doubles 4.0, both in the 35-49 bracket.
Campagnolo credits her success to a terrific support group. She was in San Diego with a throng of players from The Hub Silicon Valley in the San Jose suburb of Campbell.
“We have a really core group of friends up in San Jose at The Hub that we train with,” Campagnolo said. “We have some fun, too, but we’ve been really good about making sure everyone’s on point to train for mixed, to train for ladies’ doubles and train for singles. I had a great couple sessions with my friend Janaye (Sakkas) last week that helped me. My friend … coaching, my husband, Greg, coaching, and got me ready for today and for last night, too.”
Campagnolo got into pickleball during the pandemic. She felt she had reached a plateau in tennis and sought out a new sport to tackle.
“My whole life has been tennis, tennis, tennis,” Campagnolo said. “I actually first started playing (pickleball) on a court with tape and chalk in the middle of our friends Barb and Wendy’s houses. Then, sure enough, we kind of peeled people over from tennis one by one to what we call the dark side, pickleball. And now our whole crew that we played USTA with, we now do this and we do the qualifiers together. We do local tournaments together. We have a group of 20 to 25 people that travel all over the country to play in these awesome events and we’ve had such a spectacular time doing it. We all help each other, we encourage each other, we coach each other, we celebrate together.”
Her run to the gold medal was a little surprising. She entered the tournament seeded eighth and won her first match 15-11 over Karly Given of Cardiff, California. Her biggest challenge was next as Campanolo faced top-seeded Joann Macgregor of Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. But Campagnolo made it look rather easy with a 15-1 victory that set the tone for the rest of the day. She cruised to a 15-2 semifinal win before the 15-5 victory over Simpson for the gold.
“I really wanted to focus on putting it in the middle of the court and then finding the opening and coming into the net when you can,” she said. “But I stayed back quite a bit more so than I usually do, probably because of the wind. I had great competitors. I think the sportsmanship all around was really fun today. It has been the whole week. … But I think the quick start was definitely just trying to be consistent.”
Steve Drumwright is a journalist based in Murrieta, California. He is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
