Hit the court with locally made pickleball accessories
Few activities have grown in popularity as quickly as pickleball, and Baton Rouge has enthusiastically joined the trend.
Over the past few years, pickleball courts have popped up all across the Capital Region. These dinking destinations offer dedicated players a place to gather and play, and beginners a chance to learn.
And Baton Rougeans know how to embrace a new pursuit with enthusiasm. For two local players, the pickleball scene has become a great place to innovate.
Jacob Triche saw this opportunity a few years after he started playing. He noticed that pickleball paddles, even the ones professionals used, didn’t meet his standards. He says traditional paddles offer either power or control, but none seemed to offer both.
Triche used his industrial design background to build a paddle that offered both. He was already in the process of building an accessory to assist players, a top-spin trainer, so he decided to pursue making new paddles with this manufacturer.
For nearly a year, Triche tested over 30 iterations before settling on the proper model. He had other players test the prototypes and made adjustments based on their feedback.
To get the perfect design, Triche needed a paddle soft enough for players to feel the ball make contact with the face, but firm enough to deliver hard hits. Triche says feeling the ball on the paddle face can make all the difference.
“I did the best of both worlds, where any player could pick it up and feel comfortable with it. It’s very intuitive,” he says of his paddle. “The way I designed it, you still have a good connection and feel to the ball.”
Triche’s paddle, the E2-CF Flex Foam, hit the market in May 2026. Now he sells paddles from his brand Grit Pickleball, along with accessories like tuning grips, bags, turning tape and the top-spin training tool he was developing alongside the paddles.
Triche says the community support for his brand has been great, and you’ll often find players at local spots like Stacks or Pickleball Kingdom using Grit gear. Triche is also the official paddle and bag sponsor of the LSU Pickleball Club, and he gets to see his work in action at their matches.
Local pickleball coach Timothy Spinosa also saw an opportunity to create something unique for the game.
Inspired by watching players struggle to practice alone, Spinosa drew on childhood memories and his career as a physical education teacher to develop a solution.
He remembered old paddle ball sets where the ball was attached to the paddle with a string, allowing the player to keep playing without chasing down the ball. Building on that idea and applying it to his trainees’ unique struggles, he designed his own continuous rebound training tool.
The X-treme Pickleball Trainer is an attachment that can fit on any pickleball paddle. The product is an adjustable cord that connects the paddle to the ball. This allows players to practice a variety of skills on their own.
Because the cord’s length is adjustable, players can practice dinking, forehand and backhand shots. The player can move freely to practice their footwork, which Spinosa says helps his players tremendously.
“This is a great tool for you to get the fundamentals down,” Spinosa says. “You can really get your footwork in place, and your hand-eye coordination, which is huge with this because if you get that part of it down, you’re one step ahead of the game when you show up to the court.”
You can buy Spinosa’s Xtreme pickleball trainer online on his website, on Amazon.com, or in person at Court to Table and Pickleball Kingdom.
Want to learn more about Baton Rouge’s pickleball scene? Take a peek at our guide to pickleball from our September 2026 issue.
