Whoever said good things don’t happen to good people never met Bobbi Oshiro.
With her ever-present smile and humble grace, it would be a challenge to find anyone on the APP Tour - and likely beyond - who doesn’t have something good to say about the 30-year-old Hawaii native.
“Bobbi Oshiro is the epitome of fun-spirited on and off the court. She’s there to compete, but it’s always with a good energy and a smile. She’s like a pint-sized ray of Hawaiian sunshine,” offers fellow pro Susannah Barr, about Oshiro, who packs a punch in her 5-foot-2 frame.
Barr and Oshiro claimed the women’s pro doubles title at the 2025 APP Sacramento Open earlier this month, their second gold medal together after winning the championship at the 2024 APP Chicago Open last September.
After taking about three months off of competing, Oshiro started her 2025 pickleball season in Sacramento, and any fears of rust quickly dissipated. In addition to her gold in women’s pro doubles, Oshiro won the mixed pro doubles title with Will Howells, a duo that has seen success in the past, winning together in New York last year.
“I felt a lot of pressure because that was my first tournament back after, I believe it was three months, and it was also my first tournament of 2025, and a lot of players have already been playing a lot, so I felt like I was a little behind, even though I had been training a ton,” Oshiro admits about her feelings going into Sacramento.
The double crown that Oshiro earned in Sacramento was the first of her APP career and her second total. It was also proof that she had picked up right where she left off in 2024, break or no break. Her last tournament of the 2024 season was the USA Pickleball National Championships in November. There, she won the first women’s pro singles title of her career, as well as the mixed pro doubles gold with Howells.
“I remember going into that tournament I just wanted to go out there and kind of have fun. I felt like I didn’t really have pressure on myself, which was nice,” recalls Oshiro. “I went out there and after my first couple matches I felt like I gained confidence in my singles game because I haven’t really played too many singles tournaments before then.”
As the singles event progressed, Oshiro’s confidence evolved. She started to trust her steadiness, and also found that being steady from the baseline and being able to make balls was a plan she could rely on. She utilized that thought process throughout the tournament, and believes that’s where she found her identity in the singles game. Her first gold medal in singles was the reward.
“It was a great feeling just because I feel like I put in a lot of work, and because I haven’t really played too many singles events, I maybe was not as confident as I should have been,” Oshiro admits. “But after winning, that gave me a lot of the confidence of how I should be playing singles and how I should be viewing myself moving forward. A lot of the players coming into the game are very good. They’re young, they’re athletic, they’re fast. So still being able to make that run really made me feel good going into 2025.”
Going into 2025 will forever be a memorable time for Oshiro, but not for anything to do with pickleball.
On February 1, 2025, Oshiro married her longtime sweetheart, Shermann Alconcel, in a mountainside ceremony surrounded by 120 friends and family members at the Ko’olau Ballrooms on the island of Oahu.
Oshiro and Alconcel have known each other since high school, when they met playing junior tennis in Honolulu. They didn’t start dating until after high school though, and their relationship was on-and-off through college, as Oshiro played tennis at Boise State and Alconcel chose to attend the University of Miami. After graduation, Alconcel wanted to to remain in South Florida, so Oshiro relocated to the Sunshine State to join him.
“We’ve kind of just grown. We’ve matured, We’ve found the careers that we want to get into and a lot of things are better right now,” explains Oshiro, who also works part-time in partnerships and account management. “He’s overall a great person and I can’t believe I was able to marry this guy since we first started dating after high school.”
Alconcel works as a physician assistant in Vero Beach, Florida, which is almost two hours north of the couple’s home in Plantation. His schedule is such that he works seven days straight and has the following seven days off, and while he is away for the seven days he’s working, he returns to Plantation in his off time, which is a schedule that works out great for both.
Bobbi’s legal last name is now Oshiro-Alconcel, although she plans on keeping just Oshiro for pickleball tournament purposes. The hyphenation was important to her because she’s one of the last Oshiros in her family to keep the name. When they have children in the next few years, however, the kids will take Alconcel as their surname.
Engaged since 2021, Oshiro and Alconcel had plenty of time to plan their wedding, but despite the lead time, Oshiro found the wedding planning process significantly more stressful than a Championship Sunday match.
“It was stressful. I think I had mental breakdowns every single week, but you know what? It was well worth it. On the day of the wedding, I thought our guests were happy, were excited about it - we were very excited about it, so it was a very nice day. It was worth all the stress, but I don’t know if I would advise people to go through that,” chuckles Oshiro, who was in Hawaii for wedding prep almost two months prior to the wedding. “It was something that we’ve been planning for a very long time and it’s something that we wanted for a long time because it brought our family together. It brought both our families together to meet each other and just hang out and it brought our friends together and it brought people from out of state to visit Hawaii for the first time. So I think that’s what really made it special. But also that we finally got to have that day.”
The venue they chose for their wedding was coincidentally the same venue where their senior prom was held. But as fate would have it, they didn’t go to prom together, each had a different date.
“He said he chickened out on asking me,” laughs Oshiro about her now husband.
Good to know that all these years later, Alconcel stepped up when it really mattered.
One other thing Oshiro would like her husband to step up for is a mixed doubles pickleball match. Alconcel plays pickleball with a group of friends in the Fort Lauderdale area, but only does so recreationally and for fun, which is just fine with Oshiro. But she’s really hoping to play a mixed doubles match with her husband, just once.
“He doesn’t want to play with me,” insists Oshiro. “I’m really hoping that he agrees to play with me, at least just in one local tournament, like one that can be just a small local tournament. I think he feels like he has to play really well and he has to win, which I really don’t care. I’ve never gotten to play a tournament with him.”
This is perhaps the one area where the future remains a bit unclear for Oshiro. After her double gold in Sacramento, she competed in the 2025 APP Cayman Islands Open. While that tournament didn’t contribute to APP rankings, she still walked away with a mixed pro doubles gold with Richard Livornese Jr. and a women’s pro doubles gold with Judit Castillo, both first-time partners. This is further indication that Oshiro is squarely on the right track.
“My goals for the year are I want to be able to beat the medal count that I had from last year. I don’t event remember, eight, nine or 10 medals, I don’t even know,” she says, in true, humble Oshiro fashion. “But I want to beat that number going in this year and just have fun with it, and prioritize my schedule. I think last year I didn’t quite prioritize my scheduling so I was doing a lot of back-to-back. I was playing a lot of tournaments. So I want to make sure that I give my body the adequate rest. I think that’s the most important part for me this year.”
For those keeping track at home, Oshiro’s APP Tour medal total from 2024 is eight - three gold, one silver, and four bronze. Considering she’s already 25 percent of the way there - and one away from matching the gold total - only one tournament into the year, it’s clear that the new hardware around Oshiro’s neck and a certain ring finger aren’t weighing her down at all.
