It was a rhetorical question rooted in decades of experience in college athletics.
“Who doesn’t want to be around winners?” Colleen Shearer said, explaining the reason behind her business partnering with the University of Virginia’s pickleball club.
Before she co-founded Cville Smash, a sparkling new 33,000-square-foot indoor pickleball facility in Seminole Square in Charlottesville, Shearer was a longtime women’s college lacrosse coach, including a 20-year stint as a UVA assistant highlighted by five ACC titles and the 2004 NCAA championship.

Colleen Shearer, a former UVA women’s lacrosse assistant coach, is the co-founder of Cville Smash. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
When you can talk of your own record of success, you’re speaking Shearer’s language. That’s where UVA pickleball came in, with its 2023 national title and two other top-five finishes since the club’s establishment in 2020.
“I know what it takes to win at the highest level,” Shearer said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, I respect that. There’s something there that we want to be around.’”
On Aug. 18, less than a month before Cville Smash’s opening, the nine-court building was announced as the official indoor facility for UVA pickleball, opening its doors for practices as well as a UVA-hosted regional tournament in November.
In exchange, the club, with its large following, promotes Cville Smash on its Instagram account and regularly brings its top players to the building on Monday evenings to compete against some of the best local competition.