Executive Director, Chris Nickell

Chris Nickell, Pictona’s New Executive Director

Chris Nickell comes to Pictona after a long career in higher education spanning 29 years across the U.S. Chris has served at every level including College President, Chief Academic Officer and Chief Executive Officer of a global natural health education company with students in all 50 states and 40 countries. Chris comes with a wide range of executive level experience including finance, sales and marketing, HR, legal, operations, IT, facilities and has worked closely with many government agencies during his tenure in higher education.

Chris has coached youth sports for 30 years including football, baseball and basketball and of course, pickleball. He has a passion for developing juniors, not just in the skills of the sports he has coached but the many life lessons gained through competition, most importantly, how to handle wins and losses with grace and humility. One of the strategic goals he looks forward to achieving at Pictona is building a robust juniors, high school, and collegiate program. He strongly believes that this area of our sport is behind schedule and he is committed to Pictona being a place that can work collaboratively with other companies and organizations within the sport of pickleball to continue pushing the growth of junior and collegiate pickleball.

Chris was a competitive athlete himself, playing football and baseball through high school. In addition, he grew up playing table tennis in high school, college and beyond while residing in southwestern Germany. Chris started playing pickleball in 2019 while living in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He noticed the same seniors going into the gym hitting a green wiffle ball with a large table tennis paddle. He went home and bought an Onix Z3 on Amazon and became addicted.  

Chris relocated back home to Dayton, Ohio in 2020 after losing his stepfather to COVID so he didn't play pickleball for four years until the beginning of this year, when he dove head first, all in to the sport and decided it was time to walk away from higher education and pivot his career into the sport he had missing since 2020. This year, Chris has played in many tournaments winning his share of hardware including bronze in the Champions Division of Men's 3.5-3.99 50+ in Dallas earlier this month. He served as the Pickleball Director at Woodhaven Swim and Tennis Club in Centerville, Ohio, coached for Pickleball Kingdom and has been working with PickleRage - Centerville with their programming while coaching the University of Dayton Pickleball Club. He is a triple certified pickleball coach with PPR, PCI and DUPR Coach certification. He greatly looks forward to enhancing Pictona's pickleball programming with many DUPR courts, leagues and events and hopes to partner with DUPR Collegiate on several initiatives.

Chris and his wife Amy have four children, Carissa (25), Caitlyn (23), Arabella (15) and Cash (12). Chris will be relocating ahead of his family who will finish out the school year back in Centerville, Ohio.