APP Tour Star Sofia Sewing (appears) to Sign With UPA
UPDATE (1:15 am EST, Jan 28): We have some finality to this situation. The Will Howells special for Sewing. 2026 she’ll be playing APP Tour events and MLP, and the. 2027 she’ll be full time PPA and MLP. Sounds like UPA is trying to sign more APP women so we’ll see where that leads us.
UPDATE (7:30 pm EST): Probably our last update on this for now. It sounds like a split tour situation for 2026 Ă la Will Howells. The Will Howells special. Makes sense for everyone involved, except for the APP.
UPDATE (6:30pm EST): It appears that Sewing is staying with APP and won’t be signing with the UPA after all. Franklin collaborated with Sewing on an Instagram reel announcing she will be sharing the court with Megan Fudge this year. The APP Tour account commented on the post with “WE’RE SO READY”. Hmmmmmm…it appears the gun may have been jumped. We’ll have to see what comes of all this.
Sofia Sewing appears to now be UPA signed. In news that was initially broken via X by Jimmy Miller and Erik Tice (and then subsequently deleted), the best non-UPA signed talent looks to have been secured by the UPA, which means Sewing will be eligible to play PPAs and MLP events.
This would be considered the biggest UPA signing in quite sometime as Sofia Sewing spent all of 2025 grinding on the APP Tour. It was more of a matter of when, not if, Sewing made the jump to the UPA, as they continue to assert their dominance of the pro pickleball world. Sewing has proven to be very capable in all 3 disciplines on the APP. While her results have not been insanely dominant, she has been winning a good chunk with partners who have not proven to be top APP players outside of their partnership with Sewing.
As we noted in our Winners and Losers of 2025 article, it is usually a good sign when a player can propel lesser partners to better results. Sewing is still a relatively newer player, having first picked up a paddle in April 2024, but it has been apparent that she is the most intriguing of the newer female talent in the sport, where the depth in the women’s player pool remains a topic of discussion.
We do not expect Sewing to have huge issues getting partners out of the gate. There are going to be players willing to bet on the upside and that her talent will allow her to catch up to the level of the PPA talent in a short period of time. Unlike Will Howells, there is no competitive data that we can drawn on to see how Sewing matches up right now against the best out there. She has big power and good hands and has continued to make strides in her game over the past year so it will be fun to see how she stacks up.
The most difficult part of this conversation will be for decision-makers of MLP franchises. The MLP draft is scheduled to take place in less than a month on February 27th and there are only two PPA tournaments prior to that date. Even if Sewing plays in both of those events, that is a limited set of data to make a big decision on. Sewing is based in Florida and it will be critical for teams to get intel from signed UPA players who have practiced with and against Sewing in recent months.
From a pure rankings perspective, we would slot Sewing in immediately as a top 25 doubles player. But the bigger question is where she fits in from an upside perspective.
We are still waiting on the public release of the full 2026 MLP Competition Structure so it remains unclear how the keeper situation will operate for teams that fully revamped their roster going into the 2025 season, such as the Columbus Sliders. However, there’s good reason to expect that Sewing could be the most coveted female of anyone outside the top 9 players (ALW, AB, Jorja, Tyra, Rachel R, CP, Kawamoto’s, Parris) who is not kept by their teams. Sewing is an immediate top 10 singles player and is one of the few players outside the top 10 who has the capability to break into the top 10 in doubles at some point in the near-ish future.
Considering the limited depth of the female pool, there is virtually no question that Sewing will be one of the first players taken in the free agency draft. She may be the perfect fit for the Palm Beach Royals, who are surely looking to make a big splash and a Florida based player with major upside could be ideal.
Assuming the news is legitimate, and we believe there is beyond the deleted posts on X, it will be fascinating to see how Sewing’s career plays out over the course of 2026.
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This is great news for the UPA, and us fans. They obviously have the best women, but the high-end talent pool is still pretty thin and could really use a player of Sofia’s ability (plus several more). While exciting, this news isn’t necessarily shocking after reading about APP’s problems. I hope to see Sofia quickly surge into that second tier of women below ALW.
The overall women’s depth really thins out in general so any additional top level talent is welcome for UPA and MLP in particular to add more talent