Brothers and military veterans Martin and Chris Robertston of the Austin Fire Department are firefighters with a passion for pickleball.

The tandem recently claimed gold in 18+ men’s doubles at the 2025 World Police & Fire Games in Birmingham, AL after being sponsored by Sport Clips Haircuts to participate in the festivities.

Finishing atop the podium together meant everything to them.

“It was awesome. Being able to do that with my brother, how cool is that? Having pickleball in the Games just shows you how much that sport has taken off,” said Martin, 40, who also secured gold in 18+ men's singles in Alabama. “Representing Austin Fire, representing my community, and representing Cranky Pickle in New Braunfels where I give lessons, that was just amazing.”

“It means a lot. We were athletes our entire life. We loved competing and we never had the opportunity growing up to compete together in high-level tournaments, so this actually gave us a chance to do that, and we've really strengthened our relationship through that,” added Chris, 36. “It's so good for us. Being out there competing and just our chemistry together is really almost non-verbal on the court. We know what each other is doing and that's a testament to our relationship and our bond as athletes.”

Martin was introduced to America’s fastest-growing sport in 2019 shortly after embarking on his firefighting career, and it made an impression on him from the start.

He then passed his appreciation of the game down to Chris, who caught the bug as well.

“At the very first station that I worked at, I was on “probation,” which is basically a six-month period where you just do all the dirty work. You kind of get broken in. Everybody else is doing all the fun stuff, and you're just cleaning and studying and learning how to become a firefighter. It's kind of like a fraternity. My crew there at Station 17 played pickleball every day, and I was always watching them,” recalled Martin. “I'm like, ‘Man, that looks fun,’ but they never let me near a paddle. Finally on Christmas, they let me play. I was just slamming, and the first overhead I took, I was hooked. That pretty much started off my pickleball journey. Once I picked it up at the station, then I started playing rec play, and the rest is history.”

Now, pickleball is an integral part of their respective lives.

And given their line of work, the fitness components involved in drilling and competing alike are especially important.

“It's really helped me grow as an athlete, especially with my footwork. I've learned how to start using footwork drills, which end up becoming cardiovascular exercises. It's actually inspired me to want to start a YouTube fitness channel specifically for pickleball fitness,” explained Martin. “Without pickleball, I'd still be playing a sport, but now I feel like I'm playing more of a sport that's a little safer for my knees and for my ankles, but still just as good for my cardiovascular health.”

“I grew up playing football. I was pretty good at it, and I trained hard at it. Then there was a gap where I didn’t play sports. I just lifted weights in the military. But the more serious I got with pickleball, the more I started training for it. Just seeing the effects of actually training the right way for it, how it could positively affect my game, it filled in that gap,” added Chris. “I had a long gap between training for different sports, so it definitely helped playing pickleball.”

The sport has been good to the Robertson siblings in so many ways.

Learning life lessons along the way is a primary benefit.

“When we first picked up paddles, we would just go play rec games in Cedar Park. We got in a game one time and we were playing against these two older ladies and they destroyed us. We go to the net and we tap paddles at the end, and I remember one of the ladies looking at me and saying, ‘How does it feel to get beat by your grandma?’ shared Martin. “It had me laughing really hard, but it also lit a little bit of a fire in me to go drill and get better at pickleball. I love that. I still go back and play random open plays everywhere. It doesn’t matter what level the players are. I love just going and competing with the community.”

“There was a moment in my life where when I got to a 5.0 level, I wouldn’t play with the lower level players because selfishly I wanted to get better. But I kind of just had a coming-to moment and kind of threw that out the window and just looked at that like, ‘Hey, I’m here to have fun. Let’s play with 3.5 players,’ so I took my brother-in-law out, who was a 3.0 player, and went to play some open play,” noted Chris. “I’ve been doing that ever since, and I never looked back. Basically just living in the moment, being present when you play, and having fun.”

Martin and Chris are competing in the pickleball portion of the 2025 Texas Firefighter Summer Games this week in Bryan, TX.

It features a team-based MLP format.