Wilson and Fernando Belasteguin have launched the Wilson American Collegiate Padel League (ACPL) by Bela. Wilson is the founding and naming partner; Bela, the retired pro legend who is still very much Team Wilson, serves as ambassador and chief advisor. Season one runs this fall, and it already has the bones of a real competitive season.
How the Wilson ACPL college padel season works
How the league works: Challenges and Local Invitationals run through the fall. The country is split into four divisions: Atlantic (East Coast), Sunshine (Florida), Lone Star (Texas), and Pacific (West). Regional Championships land in November, with one regional champion from each division heading to a two-day National Finals in March: Saturday is round robin, and Sunday crowns the first ever ACPL National Champion.
College clubs, players, and the $25 entry fee
How big is it on day one? The league’s own site, joinacpl.com, lists more than 20 college clubs and more than 120 players. Coverage of the launch puts it closer to around 30 schools and roughly 200 students. Either way, the founding club list reads like an admissions brochure: Yale, Babson, UPenn, Drexel, Duke, Columbia, NYU, and growing.
Two details matter. First, the price of admission: 25 dollars a year for players, and registering a school is free. College sports should feel welcoming, not intimidating, and that price point removes just about every excuse. Second, this is club-level, student-club padel, not NCAA varsity competition. It is also a separate effort from the USPA Collegiate program, so there are now two tracks building college padel in the US.
From ACPL Courtside pop-ups to a national league
This did not come out of nowhere. ACPL ran Courtside pop-ups as proof of concept before the season: New York City in February with seven founding schools (Yale took that first event), plus Boulder, Miami’s RacquetX, Boston with BC, Northeastern, MIT, BU, and Harvard, and Los Angeles.
Why college padel matters for growth in the United States
Why this matters for US padel: college is the exact moment players pick a racket brand, a friend group, and a weekend habit that can stick for decades. Putting Wilson’s name on the front door of the sport for college students is a brand play with a pipeline attached, and Bela brings the credibility: he still leads Miami P1 and is expanding the Bela Padel Center. The real question is whether these founding clubs turn into real rivalries. Yale already has bragging rights from New York City. Your move, Harvard.
National Padel Month adds to the institutional push
The league arrives in the middle of a bigger institutional push. October is the first ever National Padel Month, led by USA Padel, anchored around the US Open Padel Championships, which ran October 2 to 4 across Padel Haus NYC venues with Division 1 finals at Padel Haus Greenpoint. College courts, a national month, a growing tournament calendar: the on-ramps are being built, not just more glass.
How students can join the American Collegiate Padel League
If you are a student, the move is simple: check joinacpl.com, see if your school has a club, and if it does not, registering one is free. The first national champion will be crowned in March, and somebody’s campus is about to start a rivalry it will talk about for years.