RallyTrack: the World's First Pickleball Automatic Scoring System

Pickleball is a simple game. A paddle, a ball, a net, and a court. The rules aren't complicated. So why does every game seem to end in an argument about the score? 

Barrett Worthington and Megan Charity asked themselves that question a lot. And instead of accepting it as part of the game, they built something to fix it. 

That something is RallyTrack, the world's first automatic pickleball scoring system. And the story of how it came to be is about a lot more than keeping score. 

It Started With a Vision 

When Barrett and Meg opened Rally in South End Charlotte in July 2023, they had a clear mission: build the Topgolf of pickleball, but with better food, better vibes, and a deeper commitment to community. 

Barrett came from National Geographic, where she spent four years developing games like Animal Jam and Doomsday Preppers. Meg was a professional pickleball player who rose to No. 13 in the world after picking up a paddle in 2015 and never looked back. Together, they were uniquely positioned to see what pickleball could become. Not just a sport, but a full social and entertainment experience. 

The seeds were planted even earlier. In 2017, the pair founded Weigo, an app that matched tennis players with coaches nearby. When they added pickleball "kind of on a whim," they were floored by the response. The platform quickly evolved into a community-building tool, which inspired them to pivot to an events model. First with Picklefest, a four-day pickleball festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, backed by more than a dozen brand sponsors and attended by players from across the country. The demand was undeniable. 

Rally was the natural next step. 

The Problem Worth Solving 

From the very beginning, Barrett and Meg saw the potential of pairing pickleball with technology. They looked to Topgolf as a model, a company that turned golf into a $2 billion entertainment empire by combining food, music, and cutting-edge gamification technology. Entertainment brands like Puttshack, Electric Shuffle, and Flight Club had had similar success revolutionizing their respective games (mini golf, shuffleboard, and darts, specifically) through engaging gamification tech that appealed to a broad, social audience. 

The question was: could they do the same for pickleball?  

The answer was yes. But the “how” took time to figure out. 

Topgolf works by embedding RFID chips inside golf balls so the system can track where they land. That approach doesn't translate to pickleball. You can't chip a standard pickleball, and requiring players to use custom equipment would create friction and make licensing the technology to other venues nearly impossible. 

So Rally took a different approach entirely. 

How RallyTrack Works 

RallyTrack uses four cameras equipped with a custom computer vision system positioned around each court. The cameras track the ball, recognize court boundaries, and apply the actual rules of pickleball to count the score in real time. No chips, no manual inputs, no arguments. 

Think of it like the Hawk-Eye system used in professional tennis to determine if a ball is in or out, but with a twist. Where Hawk-Eye tracks the ball, RallyTrack tracks the entire game. It knows pickleball rules. It knows when you've committed a kitchen fault. It knows when to switch sides with your partner. 

The system also uses AI and heuristics to track players and the ball simultaneously, making it sophisticated enough to handle the fast-paced, dynamic nature of pickleball play. And because it works with standard pickleballs, you can even bring your own. 

When you walk onto a RallyTrack court, you check in on a touchscreen and choose from eight avatars that represent you on the display during play. Inspired by the duo’s love of Nintendo 64’s Mario Kart (true Millennials, they are), each avatar has its own personality and on-court persona. When you win a point, your avatar does a little dance; lose a point, watch them cry, shout, or – in the case of Jimmy the jalapeño – breathe fire out of their mouths. Wondering which avatar is you? Take the quiz.

More Than Just Scoring 

RallyTrack isn't just about removing the arguments. It's about making the game more fun, more social, and more accessible. 

The system offers custom game modes designed by Meg based on her years of coaching at country clubs, and gamified by Barrett to add an extra layer of entertainment. One of the most popular Arcade games is a pickleball version of King or Queen of the Court -- the same game Meg used to play with her tennis students, now supercharged with digital scoreboards, avatars, and the occasional fireball shooting across the display.  

These custom modes make the game more dynamic and inclusive for larger groups, which is core to Rally's philosophy. The more people who can play together, the stronger the community becomes. 

Built to Scale 

One of the most important decisions the Rally team made in developing RallyTrack was to build it with licensing in mind from the beginning. 

Because the system requires only cameras and software, no retrofitting courts, no custom equipment purchases, it can be installed at any existing pickleball venue. Country clubs, recreation centers, and entertainment venues. Any court can become a RallyTrack court. 

The long-term vision is even bigger. As Rally expands to new cities, RallyTrack will power an ecosystem where you can play in Charlotte and compete on the leaderboard against someone in Nashville. Your stats, your history, your avatar. All of it travels with you. 

The Bigger Picture 

RallyTrack exists because Barrett and Meg believed that the technology behind the experience matters as much as the experience itself. That removing friction, the score disputes, the confusion, the "was that in or out?", makes room for more of what actually matters: the conversation, the competition, and the connection. 

At Rally, we've always said we're in the business of connection. RallyTrack is the technology that makes that possible on the court. The courts, food, programming, and community do the rest. 

The world's first automatic pickleball scoring system started in a Charlotte venue with eight courts and a big idea. Where it goes from here is just getting started. Interested in bringing RallyTrack to your facility? Request a demo here.