NML’s 2026 MLP Draft Big Board – Women
It is getting more and more difficult to put out thoughtful and thorough analysis of all the players for MLP purposes. Back in 2023, there were 24 teams but, with only 4 players per team, the player pool between Premier and Challenger was only 96 players deep, which included PPA and APP players.
In 2026, the league will go 120 players deep with 20 teams and 6 players per team, but there are so many more players in the mix. There are close to 200 UPA signed players that are eligible to be drafted, which does not include all the players competing outside of the UPA umbrella. The 2026 MLP Draft will require 66 total players to be chosen between starters and bench players – 28 starting roster spots are available (12 men and 16 women) and 38 bench spots (20 men and 18 women).
We are at the point in pro pickleball where if you are not paid to play pro pickleball, paid by a team, paid to cover the sport or use most of your free time to watch pro pickleball, it is pretty much impossible to watch a significant amount of footage on all the relevant draft eligible players.
With that being said, we thought it would be fun to put out together a big boards for the best women and men available in the 2026 MLP draft. Of course, this is a general big board, and it would be altered to different degrees based on team-specific needs. For our purposes, we have approached this exercise with the idea of finding the best doubles talent that could help push a team towards future championship contention and highlight the higher end singles specialists. Our understanding is players drafted in 2026 can be kept for multiple years depending on the length of their UPA contract, so we are operating on that basis for our big board.
We are doing the women first today and we’ll post the men tomorrow.
(1) Anna Bright – There isn’t much to say other than to wonder how much money she will go for. St. Louis saved money dropped her over one of the guys. Could Anna cost less than her retention price?
(2) Jorja Johnson – The one caution teams should have about Jorja is that she shouldn’t be the left-side alpha female. She is best suited to be a beast on the right and she is by far the best right-side female out there right now.
(3) Danni-Elle Townsend – It’s unclear to us whether she prefers the right or the left side. It does appear that she has the toolbox and mentality to be a left-side alpha, but she spends a good chunk of time on the right side in what we have seen. She has a really unique skillset for women with an elite backhand roll/flick and one-hand backhand counter. We have been extremely impressed. She is worth taking a gamble on long-term and we might prefer her upside to Sofia Sewing’s.
(4) Meghan Dizon – You know what you are going to get with Dizon. She’s a strong right-side player, who can now be replaced for Dreambreakers, which is a big deal.
(5) Lea Jansen – Is Columbus looking to buy Jansen back at a lower price? We may not have thought this one through enough when we saw she got dropped by the Slider, and it may be that Columbus simply expects to get her back at a lower price. So, the question is whether Jansen is more of a 1-year rental player or if she can stick around as a #2 starter on a championship team.
(6) Jamie Wei – Wei might be the most under the radar player in both genders for this draft. Unfortunately for GMs going into February thinking they may be able to pull a fast one by drafting Wei, she had two good showings in Cape Coral and Mesa with wins over Truong/Todd and Christian/Irvine with Allyce Jones. The power and hands look legit, but we have real concerns with the softness of her hands. Still, we’d rather take a chance on Jamie Wei becoming very good than going with what you know in Mari Humberg.
(7) Mari Humberg –She’s one of the only higher end starter ready women available. The difficulty is that she is a left-side female without #1 mixed capability and has a strong preference to play mixed with a lefty. Humberg might be close to capped out on her upside.
(8) Kiora Kunimoto – We’ll continue to flag her long, protracted strokes as an inhibitor to high level doubles play until we see otherwise, although it is less of a concern in women’s doubles. What you can’t teach is the power that Kunimoto possesses. There’s major upside here and she may very well be too low on this big board.
(9) Cailyn Campbell – We have not been as encouraged with Cailyn’s start to 2026. The power is not something you can teach, which is obviously part of what you are looking for. The consistency is something that can be elusive for players who don’t come by it naturally. She’s worth taking a chance on for a starting spot in 2026, but the stock isn’t as high as it was during the MLP season last year.
(10) Callie Smith – Again, this is not a big board predicated on best player currently available. It’s projection and how much a player can help win a championship. Callie is a very capable player, but does she impact championship contention?
(11) Isabella Dunlap – She is more known for her singles right now, but as we wrote about with the men, it could be a safer risk to find strong singles player who have demonstrated they have room to grow on the doubles side. Dunlap and Nicole Conard lost a tight match in Mesa to Brooke Buckner and Chao Yi Wang.
(12) Sahra Dennehy – Much like Dunlap, Dennehy fits the mold as a strong singles player with some theoretical doubles upside.
(13) Elsie Hendershot – This is the point on the board where we have little conviction on where the women slot in. It’s why we have the still developing Hendershot so high despite her sub-par 2026 results. There’s a bunch of players that are currently better than her, but we continue to believe it is better to take a chance on the unknown for a team that won’t be in contention anyway. Hopefully Elsie isn’t 2 years away from being 2 years away.
(14) Jalina Ingram – Consistency and doubles nuance has eluded Ingram in her early career. Like Campbell, she has tools but changes to her game need to be made if she wants to make a bigger leap on tour.
(15) Judit Castillo – Judit is potentially a more reliable, lower upside version of Genie Bouchard. She can play a reliable level of doubles and is well versed as an MLP player to fill-in as a Dreambreaker sub. Castillo could be the perfect bench player for a contending team.
(16) Genie Bouchard – This is a doubles focused big board, but Genie will likely be a top second half of the draft target as a bench singles specialist for a few teams. She’s a better singles player than Castillo, but she really puts your team behind the 8-ball in doubles, if you need her to step-in.
(17) Estee Widdershoven – Notable that she and Ava Cavataio beat Weil/Parker 11-7, 11-4 at the recent windy PPA Challenger event in Houston. We’re not sure we have seen enough to be this aggressive, but she has shown better than a lot of the new PPA signees. She has a relaxed game, and the hands look decent and soft based on our limited film watching.
(18) Daria Walczak – Walczak was just poached from the APP Tour. She isn’t new to the game anymore, but she showed up with some good results on the APP, albeit somewhat inconsistently.
(19) Zoey Weil –The doubles stuff is a little bit interesting, and she brings some theoretical upside there. She had a solid win in Mesa with Lauren Stratman over the Brascia sisters.
(20) Ewa Radzikowska*– She brings a baseline level of very solid doubles play and she can probably play a decent enough singles. She could be a perfect fit as a veteran starter on a young team that eventually cedes the starting spot to a newer talent later in the year.
*we have been informed that Ewa Radzikowska and Andrea Koop are not playing MLP this year
(21) Alexa Schull – Another APP transplant, Schull has a weird looking game that hasn’t translated to much in the way of results on the APP. She had a recent Brick Wall moneyball win with Bobbi Oshiro, but there have been too many early APP exits for us to be very excited about her arrival on the PPA.
(22) Samantha Parker – The singles may be worth a bench spot and she can fill in for the doubles at a capable enough level, if needed.
(23) Genie Erokhina – Her win with Judit Castillo against Parenteau and Rohrabacher was shocking, and we wonder if that could vault Genie into territory, she has no business being in. She doesn’t miss all that much, but it has been proven for a long time that the way she plays doesn’t work consistently at the higher levels.
(24) Kelly Goodnow – One of us saw her in-person in Mesa and thought she was a name to keep an eye on as a 13-year-old. She just announced her PPA signing this past week. She needs time to develop physically as well as her game and we’re not sure where she is athletically, but we like her compete and instincts. And these kids just do seem to get better.
(25) Emma Nelson – She showed out decently with Max Freeman in Mesa. She’s only 15 years old, but we don’t know enough to have any strong conviction about her.
(26) Ella Yeh – She has some good power to her game, but we don’t see much of her ability outside of the early rounds. Again, we’d be more inclined to see what a few of these young guns have to offer rather than a veteran whatever. We really have to wonder if some of these juniors are being hurt by playing PPA main draws so early.
(27) Jade Rau – The teenager, Jade Rau, has the shown the briefest of flashes. Will she get a shot anywhere?
(28) Nicole Conard* – She worked her way to a PPA contract from Challenger and has slowly seen her results improve.
*we had been spelling her name Conrad, not Conard
(29) Ling Wei Kong – The uptick in results in singles and doubles to start off 2026 puts her right in the mix of players that are worthy to fill out a roster for teams.
(30) Alex Walker – We actually believe that Alex Walker is a player who has not come close to maximizing her athletic talent. The problem is that there are fundamental changes needed to her game to unlock that talent, at least in our humble opinions. As she is, she masks some doubles fundamental issues with good hands and power. It’s tough in 2026 if you’re going to be a bench player who doesn’t bring above average singles.
(31) Victoria DiMuzio – Is Victoria DiMuzio just a less talented Alex Walker?
(32) Giovanna Morelli – The young lefty is someone we are keeping an eye on. However, nothing jumps off the page in w what we have seen.
(33) Ava Cavataio – The PPA has poached a few APP players to fill out its player pool, but Cavataio’s results have been weaker than Schull’s. Like Schull, she is also young and there could be some upside in there.
(34) Albie Huang – We have not seen her play, but she comes in this high simply because Collin Johns has partnered with her in his return to the US.
(35) Paula Rives – Some mildly intriguing results to start 2026 that may indicate she is better than some of the other JAGs in the player pool. She looks limited based on the eye test, though.
(36) Brooke Caruso – It’s hard to distinguish these PPA signed players who basically only have results where they play each other and then get smoked in the next round by a good team, if they end up winning. There comes a point where you’d rather have one of these more unknown players on your roster than the known veteran women.
(37) Xiao Yi Wang-Beckvall – Has played some events in Asia with Albie Huang in Asia with not super inspiring results.
(38) Lina Padegimaite – She really doesn’t make sense for an MLP roster as a veteran player who plays a mediocre singles. However, there are 38 roster spots up for grabs and only so many players. Teams with a big youth focus may want to try to have one or two experienced players on their roster.
(39) Christa Gecheva – There isn’t a lot to distinguish her and Lina from a results standpoint.
(40) Tammy Emmrich – Same boat as Lina or Christa Gecheva. The singles is weaker for Tammy.
(41) Abbigail Hatton – Newly signed PPA player.
(42) Mehvish Safdar – It doesn’t look like there is much upside there and she’ll be a borderline player for a bench spot, particularly without a strong singles game.
(43) Andrea Koop* – She’s not playing full-time and her place in the game has diminished rapidly. Maybe she deserves to be on a bench somewhere, but it’s tough when the singles is well below replacement level.
*we have been informed that Ewa Radzikowska and Andrea Koop are not playing MLP this year
(44) Allison Phillips – If you don’t have doubles upside and don’t play a strong singles, it is hard to justify a spot on an MLP roster in 2026.
(45) Ella Cosma – Another younger junior that doesn’t profile as well as other juniors that we have seen.
(46) Marcela Hones – It’ll be surprising if she gets picked up but she has seen some better singles results recently.
(47) Zoeya Khan – Don’t have a ton of knowledge of Zoeya Khan and the results seem fine enough.
(48) Pierina Imparato – The MLP stuff we saw last year when she filled in for Chicago was sub-par.
(49) Ashley Griffith – The singles is better than the doubles right now.
(50) Irina Tereschenko – She is on an MLP only deal and is not playing tournaments. Hard to see why you would want her on your bench, unless you think she can help as a player coach.
Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com! You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @nmlpickleball
