Mary Brascia had the brilliant idea to host a Coachella-inspired festival at Los Cab Sports Club last month in Southern California.

And spoiler alert: it was a roaring success. 

“I came up with Cabchella at the beginning of the year because I love Coachella. I’ve been to Coachella before, and I went again this year,” shared Brascia. “I think the music, festival, and pickleball vibes are really a cool thing to build community and have a fun Saturday afternoon event.” 

Since Brascia is familiar with Coachella, she had lots of inspiration to pull from.

“Basically, we had a couple hours where members and non-members could come to Los Cab and listen to music and play pickleball,” she described. “We had a DJ, and he was up on the deck overlooking the courts. He was playing all sorts of house and pop music.”

The event really captured the festival vibe by featuring food trucks, vendors, drinks, and good tunes from the local pickleball community.

Her personal favorites on-site were Florence and TK Burgers.

“So many friends, pros, and amateurs came. Everyone was playing pickleball, eating and dancing all night long,” reminisced Brascia. “It was such a good time.”

Even Los Cab regulars Christine Maddox and Genie Erokhina made an appearance.

Players showed up in fun festival wear, including crochet and sparkles, and they even held a dance competition. 

“I attempted to breakdance, and I will report that I don’t think I'm going to be on the Olympic breakdancing team in the future,” joked Brascia. “But, there were some young next gen kids that definitely had good dance moves, so if they're not playing pickleball, you can probably catch them on the dance floor.”

The event was sponsored by Brascia's former MLP team, the SoCal Hard Eights.

One of the squad's founders, Rick Chan, has become a family friend and shares a similar mindset in terms of growing the game through creative events like this. 

“We all see eye to eye and want to grow the sport and bring our SoCal community together. It was really cool to have all these people involved in making Cabchella come to life,” said Brascia. “My whole family was there. Even my youngest sister Molly came back from UCLA to play. It was just super special.” 

Brascia and the rest of the Los Cab team are looking forward to planning similar events down the road.

Following the inflatable pickleball night event they staged on Halloween, I’m even more convinced I need to take a trip to Los Cab to play pickleball with the Brascia family.