Conquering Community
How One Small Company Is Removing Barriers Between Wanting to Play and Actually Playing in a Big City
By The Pickleball Weekly Editorial Team
August 5, 2026 • 12 min read
IN A CITY where space is one of the most valuable commodities, finding a place to play pickleball can often feel more challenging than playing the game itself.
Not necessarily the first person to play the game, but the first to convince everyone else that something bigger is possible.
New York City has embraced the sport’s explosive growth, but demand has far outpaced available courts. Public facilities are frequently overcrowded, private clubs can be prohibitively expensive, and reserving court time often requires planning days, if not weeks, in advance. For countless players, the biggest obstacle isn’t learning the game. It’s finding somewhere to play.
Most entrepreneurs would look at that problem and see a shortage of courts. Louis Long and Matthew Lee saw a shortage of opportunity.
Rather than asking how to build more pickleball facilities, the lifelong friends asked a different question. What if the courts already existed? What if schools, community centers, rooftops, courtyards, and recreation spaces sitting empty for much of the day could become places where people gathered, competed, exercised, and built friendships?
That idea became the foundation of Conquer Pickleball.
Today, Conquer has evolved into far more than a scheduling platform. Its marketplace connects players with organized games, coaches, clinics, and available venues throughout New York City. Its youth initiatives introduce thousands of children to the sport each year, while its nonprofit arm ensures that schools and communities with limited resources have access to equipment and instruction. Every part of the organization shares a common purpose: making pickleball easier to discover, easier to play, and easier to belong.
The company’s mission isn’t simply to help people reserve courts. It’s to remove every barrier that stands between someone wanting to play and actually stepping onto the court.
“We didn’t want to wait for someone to build more courts. We wanted to find spaces that already existed and give them a new purpose.” — Louis Long, Co-Founder/CEO, Conquer Pickleball
Show Up and Play
Like many businesses launched during the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, Conquer began with a simple observation. People wanted to reconnect.
After months of isolation, recreational sports became one of the fastest ways for neighbors, coworkers, and complete strangers to build relationships again. Long had experienced firsthand how athletics created friendships throughout his life, from his years playing competitive soccer in northern New Jersey to studying abroad in Madrid. Although he had accepted a position at a Wall Street quantitative trading firm after graduating from Tulane University, he soon realized he wanted to build something with a more direct impact on people’s lives.
Together with Lee, Long initially explored creating a platform for pickup sports in general. The duo was soon joined by Tanner Luke, who developed the Conquer Inc. app, which is available in the Apple and Google Play stores. As the team researched different opportunities and evaluated the market, one sport continued to stand out above the others. Pickleball.
Its learning curve was approachable. Players of different ages and athletic backgrounds could compete together. Games were inherently social, and newcomers often felt welcomed rather than intimidated. The challenge wasn’t convincing people to try the sport.
The challenge was giving them somewhere to play.
“In New York City, it’s pretty hard to find space to play pickleball,” Long explained. Rather than waiting for new facilities to be built, Conquer began identifying spaces already woven into neighborhoods that sat unused during evenings and weekends, including school gymnasiums, courtyards, and other community facilities.
That approach fundamentally changed the business. Instead of investing millions of dollars constructing dedicated clubs, Conquer unlocked existing spaces and transformed them into active pickleball venues. Schools gained additional value from facilities that otherwise sat empty after classes ended. Players gained affordable places to compete. Communities gained new recreational opportunities without waiting years for new construction projects.
The company’s slogan, “Show Up and Play,” became much more than a marketing phrase. It reflected a philosophy that every unnecessary obstacle should be eliminated. Players didn’t need to organize groups of friends, negotiate court reservations, or wonder whether anyone at their skill level would be there. They simply opened the app, found a game, reserved a spot, and showed up. That simplicity proved especially attractive to beginners.
Long said many first-time players tell him they don’t consider themselves athletes. Some have never played organized sports. Others are simply looking for a way to stay active while meeting new people. Pickleball, he believes, creates an unusually welcoming environment where competition and community naturally exist side by side.
As Conquer continued expanding throughout New York City’s boroughs, its marketplace became the entry point for thousands of players looking not just for a court, but for connection.
What Long and Lee didn’t anticipate was that the company’s next opportunity wouldn’t come from adults at all. It would come from children watching from the sidelines.
“A lot of people tell us, ‘I’m not an athlete.’ But pickleball is accessible when you get started, and it’s become an incredible way for people to meet others and build confidence.” — Louis Long, Co-Founder/CEO, Conquer Pickleball
The Pivot That Changed Everything
Every afternoon, the same scene played out. As students finished their school day and walked toward buses or waited for parents, adults were beginning to arrive for evening pickleball sessions. Temporary nets were rolled into gyms. Court lines appeared across hardwood floors. Paddles came out of backpacks, and conversations filled spaces that had been quiet only moments before.
The children noticed. Many had never seen pickleball before. They stopped to watch the games, asked questions about the unfamiliar courts, and became fascinated by the fast-paced rallies taking place inside buildings they had occupied only minutes earlier.
Their curiosity sparked an unexpected conversation.
School administrators began asking whether Conquer would consider introducing the sport to students. It wasn’t part of the company’s original business plan. The marketplace was growing, demand for adult programming continued to increase, and there was no roadmap for expanding into youth development.
Still, Long and his team decided to try. They launched a pilot program, believing it might become an interesting addition to the company’s offerings. Instead, it transformed the direction of the entire organization.
The response from students exceeded every expectation. Children who had never held a paddle quickly embraced the game, while teachers recognized pickleball’s ability to engage students with varying athletic abilities. Unlike many traditional sports, beginners could experience success almost immediately, encouraging participation rather than discouraging it.
What began as a simple experiment suddenly revealed a much larger opportunity. Conquer wasn’t just helping adults find places to play. It was introducing an entirely new generation to the sport.
More Than Players
For many companies, success is measured by expansion. More customers. More locations. More revenue. For Conquer, growth came to mean something different.
What began as a way to connect adults with places to play was evolving into an opportunity to shape the future of the sport itself. The pilot youth program quickly demonstrated that children weren’t simply willing to try pickleball. They were eager to learn, compete, and return for more.
The company responded by launching Conquer Kids, an initiative dedicated to introducing pickleball to elementary and middle school students through physical education classes, after-school programs, summer camps, and community events. Working alongside Long, Kristian Mayor helped establish the program during its early stages, assisting with the development and expansion of what would soon become one of New York City’s largest youth pickleball initiatives.
The growth was remarkable.
Within a relatively short period, Conquer Kids expanded into more than 50 schools throughout New York City, introducing over 10,000 students to the sport. What began with a handful of curious children watching adults play after school had become one of the region’s largest youth pickleball initiatives.
For Long, however, the numbers tell only part of the story.
His vision has never centered on producing the next generation of professional players. Instead, it focuses on giving children the same opportunities that sports provided him growing up: confidence, friendships, teamwork, and a healthy outlet that extends far beyond the boundaries of a court. That philosophy has attracted partners who share a similar commitment to growing the game.
Conquer works closely with the MLP Brooklyn Pickleball Team, helping introduce young players to Major League Pickleball while creating opportunities for students to experience professional competition firsthand. Through another partnership with JOOLA, one of the sport’s leading equipment manufacturers, students gain access to quality paddles and instructional resources that many schools might otherwise struggle to provide.
One of the program’s most memorable moments came when Conquer helped bring approximately 300 students to MLP New York, giving many children their first opportunity to watch the sport’s biggest stars compete in person.
For some, it was their first live sporting event. For others, it was the first time they realized pickleball could be something much bigger than a game played in a school gymnasium.
Experiences like those reinforce what Long believes is one of the sport’s greatest strengths. Pickleball creates a pathway that welcomes nearly everyone, regardless of age, athletic ability, or experience. Children who may not immediately gravitate toward traditional sports often discover confidence through pickleball because success comes quickly, improvement is visible, and the social atmosphere encourages participation rather than comparison.
In many ways, Conquer Kids has become an investment in pickleball’s future.
Every child introduced to the game today has the potential to become tomorrow’s recreational player, league organizer, coach, volunteer, entrepreneur, or industry leader. Long understands that sustainable growth doesn’t begin with professional tournaments or new facilities. It begins with creating positive first experiences that encourage children to keep coming back.
“We’re focused on unlocking unused space to build and strengthen local communities.” — Louis Long, Co-Founder/CEO, Conquer Pickleball
Community Before Commerce
As Conquer Kids expanded, Long and his team encountered a challenge they hadn’t anticipated. Not every school could afford to participate.
Some schools lacked funding for instructors. Others couldn’t purchase equipment or justify adding another program to already strained budgets. Turning those schools away may have made business sense, but it didn’t align with the company’s mission.
Rather than limiting access based on financial resources, Conquer created Conquer Cares, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing pickleball to underserved schools and communities.
The initiative allows the organization to provide equipment, instruction, and programming to schools that otherwise might never have the opportunity to introduce students to the sport. Instead of viewing those communities as missed business opportunities, Conquer views them as communities worth investing in. That decision reflects a philosophy that has quietly shaped the company from the beginning.
While technology powers the marketplace and scheduling platform, relationships remain at the center of everything Conquer does. Courts create opportunities for competition, but they also create places where neighbors meet, children build confidence, and communities grow stronger together.
For Long, success isn’t measured solely by how many games are booked through an app. It’s measured by how many lives are positively affected because someone was given the opportunity to play.
What’s Next
Although Conquer has grown into a multifaceted organization spanning adult programming, youth development, and nonprofit outreach, Long believes there is still more work to do.
His newest initiative, Pave 2 Play, reflects that continued evolution. The project aims to transform forgotten urban spaces into vibrant community pickleball courts through public art, creative placemaking, and corporate partnerships, demonstrating once again that the best places to play aren’t always those built from the ground up.
That, however, is another story for another time.
Building Communities, One Court at a Time
At first glance, Conquer appears to be a technology company. It has an app, a marketplace, scheduling tools, and partnerships that continue to expand throughout New York City. Those are the visible parts of the business.
What sits beneath the surface is something much larger.
Every underused gymnasium converted into an evening pickleball venue gives neighbors a place to gather. Every school program introduces children to a sport they may never have discovered otherwise. Every nonprofit initiative removes barriers that might prevent an entire community from participating.
The courts matter. The technology matters. The partnerships matter. But none of those things represent Conquer’s true purpose.
Long and Lee didn’t build a company simply to help people reserve courts. They built an organization that helps people find connection, confidence, and community through sport. In doing so, they’ve demonstrated that pickleball’s greatest opportunity may not be found in constructing more facilities, but in reimagining the spaces and relationships that already exist.
In the end, Conquer isn’t really in the app business. It’s in the community-building business. ●
About The Pickleball Weekly Editorial Team
The Pickleball Weekly Editorial Team produces in-depth reporting and cover features that examine the sport’s growth, innovation, competition, and culture. With contributors who understand both the strategy of the game and the forces shaping its future, the team is committed to telling the full story of modern pickleball.
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