Carolina C.

I’ve been coaching pickleball for about 3 years, working with juniors and adults of all levels—from true beginners to competitive tournament players. I also bring over 7 years of tennis coaching experience, which gives my instruction a strong foundation in footwork, timing, technique, and strategy. I’ve coached at private clubs and training environments, teaching private lessons, semi-private sessions, clinics, and match-play development. I focus on fundamentals and smart patterns (serve/return, thirds, dinking, drops, drives, volleys, transition play), confidence building, and clear, actionable feedback—always tailoring each session to the athlete’s goals, age, and experience level.

I bring a high-performance competitive background that translates directly to pickleball. I’m a former collegiate tennis player who competed in the U.S. on scholarship, and I also represented Portugal as a junior—consistently ranking in the top 5 nationally across multiple age divisions. Since transitioning to pickleball, I’ve continued competing at a high level, including earning spots in the main draw of PPA tournaments. This experience helps me coach with strong technical knowledge, match strategy, court awareness, and mental toughness—so players don’t just hit better, they play smarter under pressure.

Each session is built around drills that show up immediately in real games. We start with a quick warm-up and short evaluation to identify what’s costing you points (positioning, shot selection, timing, or consistency). Then we go into high-rep, game-based drills that recreate real scenarios—serve/return patterns, third-shot decisions (drop vs drive), transition resets, purposeful dinking, speed-up cues, and countering at the kitchen.

The second half is guided live-ball play with constraints (score situations, target zones, required patterns) so you learn to read the game and make better decisions under pressure. The goal is for the game to feel slower in your head—more intuitive, less reactive—plus you leave with 2–3 clear takeaways to work on right away.