Dear Great Plains Member,
Welcome to the new USA Pickleball Great Plains Region website! This will be a great place to share what’s happening in your area. Want to spotlight your club? Give a shout out to a special volunteer? Send us an article! Want to help us become a greater force for promoting the sport of pickleball in the region? Check out the fundraising opportunities just below to support our Education Ambassador work!
We have some great pieces on our Regional members. Stephanie McDonald and Hubert “Horns” Townsend are the 2020 Pioneer Award winners for the Great Plains. Two of our District Ambassadors are featured: Bill Roehrs from Nebraska and Pat and Charlie Hart from North Dakota. Rick Trauth, Southwest Montana’s Ambassador, leads the Bitterroot Pickleball Club court boom! Then there’s Gary Miller, South Dakota’s District Ambassador, finishing up an active duty deployment to support COVID. And there’s Ken Marquardt, Denver Metro District Ambassador, who has worked to get courts in the Denver area while raising over $100,000 for Traumatic Brain Injury victims to give back to the community. Also, Peg Davison explains how they raised court money through a fund called Great Outdoors Colorado. If you have similar programs in your state please send us an article!
Did you know about the USA Pickleball Grant Program for communities and schools? There’s money to be had! The 2019 statistics and links are in that article – be sure to check out the program and contact us if we can help.
Nancy Steffy and Theresa Melius, our Education ambassadors, have posted training information and are hard at work getting education volunteers throughout the Region. They are putting together materials and readying presentations to step in when state school conferences on curriculum open. To support their efforts all donations through the fundraising efforts through December 2020 will go to their work. Please check out the different ways you can help their work in the fundraising box.
Volunteers are always welcome – have you ever thought of becoming an Ambassador? Help with our Education work? Add to the technical talent?
Wander around the website, the About Section gives some history and current statistics. Let us know any ideas you have or if there are improvements we can make.
A special thank you goes to Robbie Wall, our Webmaster. His expertise, patience, and great humor have been endless. We could not have done this without him.
Steve and Ramona Boone
Great Plains Regional Directors
