Episode 41 Jose Moreno - Chief Marketing Officer for USA Pickleball

Every professional athlete, from football to tennis, relies on electrolytes to stay strong and recover fast. Why? Because sweat takes away more than water. It drains essential minerals like sodium and potassium. Without them, your body slows down and your game slips. Pickleball is no different. That's why Holi is packed with the electrolytes you need to stay sharp, fueled, and ready to play longer. Visit HoliPerformance.com. That's H-O-L-E-Y Performance dot com. And use code NEXTDOOR for 20% off your order. Thank you for joining in. I'm Mike. I'm Krisanna. We're the Pickleballers Nextdoor. Hi guys, this is Pickleballers Nextdoor. I'm Krisanna. I'm Mike. And we are joined by Jose Moreno. Oh, can't wait to talk about his stories and where he's at and where we're going with USA Pickleball. Yeah, he is the Chief Marketing Officer. And he's the national... USA Pickleball is the national governing body for the fastest growing sport in America. And so we have him joining us. And he's going to kind of just kind of tell us what he does and how great it is and how it's... what 2026 and the future is going to hold. Well, and how they're growing. Oh my gosh. And the things they're doing. We've been blessed to be part of a lot of the stuff that they're doing. And I can't wait to do more with them because what they're doing for the future and pre-future was what they started. Now where they're going in the future is incredible. Thanks for having me, guys. You're welcome. So, well, give us a little spiel about you just before how you got into pickleball. Just everybody likes to know. Sure. Yeah, well, thanks for having me first and foremost. And as I shared earlier, if you would have told me 10 years ago that I'd be working in pickleball, I would have laughed in your face and said I'm not going to work for a retirement community sport because that's just not me. But, no, my background, I've always worked in sports. I've had the honor and the privilege to build a career in it at a young age in high school. I said I'm going to work in sports one day. I think I was inspired by the movie of Jerry Maguire and, you know, all of that that came with it. As a baseball player, and I played college baseball all four years, you know, I just always had a love and a passion for what sport can do for somebody. And I was very fortunate that I moved up to Colorado, went to school up here, played baseball, and I got an internship with the Denver Nuggets in Cronky Sports. So I was exposed at an early age to what it was like and really the ins and outs. So I was working with, you know, Denver Nuggets. I was working with the Rapids, the indoor arena football team, the cross team, the Mammoth at the time, and really just kind of taking it all in. I was in corporate partnerships. College went on. Internship ended. Ended up doing small internships with, like, the NBA during the All-Star game. Like many other college students when they graduate, they think I'm going to have a job right out. Everybody's going to be offers left and right. And I thought that I was going to have every sports team in town or around the country. And fortunately or unfortunately, reality was that it wasn't true. But, you know, my heart had always been working with kids and in youth and sports. And so I worked for the YMCA all through college. So right after college, I actually was a youth and family director for the YMCA. I moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, and I opened up a YMCA there. And a year in, one of my mentors from the Nuggets who then went on to work for the NBA, she said, Listen, there's opportunities at the Phoenix Suns. I know you were from Arizona originally. In community relations, this is something that, you know, you've always had a heart and passion doing. Is that something you would ever be interested in doing and, you know, at least getting your name in the hat? And so absolutely. Oh, yeah. Why not? There I go. Yeah. So I applied, got the job. And so I was a community relations coordinator for the Phoenix Suns. And it was the best job as a 20-nothing-year-old. I worked with, you know, athletes, you know, both alumni, active, all the entertainment group, the Suns gorilla, the mascot. I was an emcee. I traveled all over the state and all over the country. And some places went internationally. You know, my job is really just to expose the brand, promote the brand, and really talk about the goodwill and the things that we're doing through NBA, NBA Cares, Phoenix Suns. You know, all the things that you would see on TV, NBA Cares, Make-A-Wish, that you're working stuff, you know, kids on court. That was what I had a hand in. And so my heart has always been working in community relations but doing it through the, you know, by way of the sports. And went on, worked for Grand Canyon University. I was with the Suns for almost four years, went to Grand Canyon University, same thing. I was community outreach manager there, worked with athletes, worked with all the marketing team, and we built a good brand, community brand around what we do in corporate social responsibility. So events, programs, whether that's literacy programs, fitness programs, we were building it, you know, really impacting the entire state of Arizona. And plus you probably got to see a lot of these up-and-coming, you know, people going to the pros. Oh, yeah. I mean, imagine what you were around that now you turn your TV on and there they are. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big difference working with, and I'll always call them, you know, young adults because a lot of guys that come into the NBA, they were still 19, 20, 21 years old. Yeah. Suddenly they have a pot of money and they don't know what to do with all this. Yeah. Where, you know, there's something that's pure about working with a college student or, you know, collegiate athletes is they're still young. They're still trying to figure out who they are, but they're eager. And, you know, it wasn't just a few years prior that they were where a lot of these kids were too. So I was with Grand Canyon University for about four years there, and then I went on to work for the Fiesta Bowl and started off there as Director of Community Relations, Charitable Giving, and Marketing. I eventually became the Chief Marketing Officer my last four and a half, five years there. And really, you know, that was an opportunity of a lifetime. You know, the Fiesta Bowl is one of the largest college bowl games in the country, and we were the most charitable bowl game in the country. We were giving away anywhere from $3 million to $5 million. We were building football fields, playgrounds, you know, sport courts. We were doing literacy programs. We were doing teacher grants. You know, we had a saying that we were more than just a game. And what people knew us for was what we were doing on the field. You know, we had our Fiesta Bowl game. We also had our Cactus Bowl game. But it was what we were doing off the field, you know, the remainder of the 11 months of the year. And so being part of that was super special. We grew it. We grew it in a big way. I was there almost nine years, and then an opportunity came to come to USA Pickleball. Here you are. Here you are. And I'm a big believer in, you know, every experience leads you to the next one. Oh, yeah. Whether that's, you know, a good experience or a bad experience. And fortunately for me, these opportunities helped guide me into where I can find my role with USA Pickleball, and I became our chief marketing and strategy officer. And, you know, when I came into this organization, it was interesting because, obviously, everybody knows the name of USA Pickleball. I don't know if many people really knew what we did. No, I don't think anybody did. I know I didn't when I started, and I'm pretty new at it. Myself included, right? I was playing pickleball. I always saw our logo on the paddles. You see the name everywhere. You just didn't quite know what that meant. I thought it was just a cool name at first when I first came to Pickleball. I thought, what a cool logo and a cool name. So tell us about it. Yeah. So, you know, as USA Pickleball, we're the governing body of the sport. And really, you know, the most simplistic way is we're here to protect and grow the sport. And, you know, we are a nonprofit organization. You know, this sport, as you guys have seen really in post-COVID, has just grown exponentially. Oh, my gosh. Which was at one point really, we'll call it that 55 and over community sport. You know, this sport has been around, you know, for many, many years, right? Yeah. And it's not like this was just a COVID thing that happened. But what happened during COVID was people were stuck indoors. They wanted to get out. They wanted to get active. I attribute a lot of, you know, the success of obviously the work that had been done with USA Pickleball on the grassroots level for 20 years prior. But also a little thing called social media, right? You had athletes that were playing pickleball. You had Taylor Swift playing pickleball. It's so many individuals that were posting about it. And they were posting how fun it was. It was just organic marketing on a whole other level during COVID for us. And so when I came on, you know, we were a small but mighty team. We'll call it of, you know, 10 individuals. And we were there growing the sport. We were, you know, still protecting the sport. We have the rules. We have our referee program. We have national events. We have our national championships. We really needed to level up. And, you know, good on our board of directors. They said we need to take this to the next level. And they brought in our CEO, Mike Neely, who is actually the CEO of the Fiesta Bowl. That's kind of how I ended up here. And, you know, it was great. We did such amazing things at the Fiesta Bowl together. And he's like, man, if I'm coming, you're coming. And let's do this. Let's really make this special. Good testimony about you. Thank you. Yeah, and I had the luxury of bringing in, you know, probably another 10 people from the Fiesta Bowl and around other sports entities. You know, we've got some of the most talented staff in our organization because we brought it all in-house. We brought marketing in-house. We brought all of our sponsorships in-house, our events, memberships. We just had to level it up as a whole. We were doing really great things as an organization, but this was now going to be the 2.0. So we've got people that come from, you know, NBA, NFL, MLB, college football, other governing bodies, other NGBs. And, you know, when you hear the term governing body, that is when you think about it, USA swimming, USA track and field, USA basketball. You know, you're working with USOPC. You're there to really grow and lift the sport. People think that, hey, you're not in the Olympics. How can you be a governing body? That's not necessarily what it means, right? Like being in the Olympics is a part of being a governing body. It can be part of it. But there are a lot of governing bodies that are not in the Olympics just yet either, or have been or are not in the Olympics anymore. You know, we're obviously – that's the question we get. Oh, yeah. When will us be in the Olympics? And I'll touch on that a little later. And, you know, we're doing the right things to help position us in a place to get us. But there's a lot of steps that people don't realize. Yeah. You know, and so, you know, I would say these last two and a half years have really been when I came on has really been about growth and kind of taking house down to its studs and really rebuilding it in this 2.0 version. Bringing that much in-house in such a short amount of time is not an easy task. And just finding the right people that are energized by what we do, you want good people that are going to do good work. You want the right people. You want the right people. Yeah, definitely. And we are the fastest-growing sport, which means we're the most popular thing out there, you know. Everybody wants to take us to the dance. So I was very intentional about bringing people that just had a passion for what we're doing here. And I don't care if you've necessarily played pickleball or not, but if you had the raw passion to make a difference in people's lives, I wanted you on my team. That's the biggest thing, too. Absolutely. And so we've built a great, great team. You know, Mike Neely, our CEO, is an amazing leader. You know, he's a very servant leader mentality of, you know, I want to support you as a staff. I want to support what we're doing, and I want to lift our mission in everything that we do. You know, as an organization, and I'll maybe touch on kind of different verticals of what we do, most people see our logo on the paddles. Yeah, that's where you think, well, all they do is they tell me what paddle I can play with. Yeah, no. Yeah, there's more to it than that. Exactly. There's a whole certification process. And, you know, just go back a couple years ago, you were talking about a few hundred manufacturers out there. You've got now close to 2,000 manufacturers that are submitting for certification now. Wow. And this business has gone gangbusters. And for us, you know, we're really there for, you know, to protect the sport, as I talked about, but the safety side of it. Right? You want to make sure that these paddles are certified. You don't want to be out on a court, and you've got somebody that's got a hot paddle that has not been certified. You know, there are limits that come with it. Oh, absolutely. I compare it as a baseball player. It's like imagine you're using wooden bat, and somebody comes in using cork bat, right? Oh, yeah. That wouldn't be okay. No. So we've got some of the brightest minds that, you know, third-party resources that are there. They're making sure that what is submitted is what is actually appropriate, and the levels are appropriate. We're certifying that. And then when you see it on the paddle, it says, yes, this can be played in USA Pickleball sanctioned tournaments. And I'll say a lot of tournaments, even if it's not sanctioned by USA Pickleball, they still use our standards and our guidelines. Which is nice. Yeah. That's good. It's best in class. And what they go through is incredible. I dissect this paddle. There's not just like, yeah, this looks pretty good. It hits the ball. I mean, I was watching some videos on how it has to perform and the machine and everything. It's crazy. And how long does it take to get certified? You know, it is a process. You know, there is a rush process that can come with it. Like anything, there are fees associated with it. Manufacturers, no. But it could take a couple months. It could take a couple weeks. It just depends on kind of the backlog of it. Carl Schmidt, who is our Chief Technology Officer, and he's a brilliant man. I mean, we've got some really, really brilliant individuals that are working on these programs. And to your point, they're dissecting it. You know, go look up PB core testing if anybody ever wants to see what that is. I mean, I'm not even smart enough to tell you about it because it's so fascinating to me of how they dissect it. And, you know, to the millimeter of what that can make in a difference of a paddle. And, you know, you guys see it playing with a paddle that's maybe a $25 one that's not certified versus one that is certified. Oh, by far. I just got the new Boomstick. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I don't think that's certified. Yeah, it is certified. You're good. But they're taking it to that top. I'm telling you, that paddle is taking it. They're right at that cusp. They have to be right there. The thing is a monster. It's great. In fact, at our national championships, we're going to have Selkirk out there. We're going to have the Boomsticks out there. And we're going to do a speed challenge. It's going to be fun. That would be great. Yeah, it'll be great. But, yeah, you know, so obviously certification, that's a big one. That's where people, you know, and not just paddles but also facilities. That's going to be something we're really leaning into in 2026. It's something we've already been doing. But court certifications, facility certifications, we want to work with, you know, companies that are building these facilities across the country, cities, HOAs. And we want to make sure that you guys are doing it up to the specs of USA Pickleball standards. And really as the North Star, right? You want to make sure that you are doing it that meets the standards of everybody out there too. Yeah. Unfortunately, and you hear the stories of people that go and invest and maybe find a cheaper alternative route and working with a contractor and they didn't do it right. And now you've got courts that are cracking. You've got fences that are too close to walls. Dangerous. You're spending more than you would have if you would have done it right. Absolutely. Yeah. So the facility side, court certification side of what we do, that's huge. And obviously just R&D as a whole. You know, technology is a big component of our organization and where we're going in the future. Our national events, you know, we have the national championships. That's something that really has been our crown jewel for many, many years. That has grown exponentially. That has been one that started in Casa Grande, Arizona, was our first one that we did. And you're talking about a couple hundred this year. We just closed it and we're at 2,600 amateurs that are going to be competing. That's coming up soon, right? That's coming up. Yeah, November 15th through the 23rd. And, you know, these are 2,600 amateurs and some pros that they have qualified to get here. You know, the amateurs, we have 19 what we call golden ticket tournaments across the country. And that's New York to Florida to Arizona to California, Washington. And amateurs go in and compete. And, you know, this isn't just your everyday tournament where you can go in and if you want to play, you can play. You've got a credit card, you can sign up. No, you actually have to qualify. I'm not an amateur. And we see a lot of athletes that will go in and compete in one state and they didn't get gold or silver or bronze. And they were, I'm going to try this again. I'm going to keep trying. And because you can also qualify for singles, doubles, mixed doubles. So if you can go in and get into different categories too, that's great. And how do you qualify? Do you have to be silver, bronze, and gold to be able to qualify? So what happens is when you sign up and you play and let's say you get gold, what that does is that gives you priority pre-registration access already. So that gives you, you're in, right? You're gold. You're the first one that's going to get the first crack at it. Silver and bronze, then it starts to get into a tiered system, right? So then we open up to silver. So whatever spots we have left that was not taken over by the gold, then you can go in and register. Then it goes into bronze and then it goes into a lottery system. If you did play in a golden ticket and we have a spot available, we will then do a lottery for that. It's not many. No, I can't imagine. It's not. Maybe one day you get a Cinderella story of somebody that didn't qualify. They go in and they run it. Who knows? But that's the beauty about the sport too. So, yeah. So people really want to get gold. It's kind of that guarantee. I want to make sure that I have my spot. And people plan their lives around this. This is their travel. This is what they look forward to at the end of the year. It's a big deal. We'll have 2,600 athletes. We'll have well over 10,000 spectators over a nine-day timeframe. We moved it from Mesa this last year to now San Diego. San Diego. Beautiful. Who doesn't want to be in San Diego in November? Yeah, exactly. We're hoping to be there. We'd love to have you guys. Yeah, and it's great. And it's really about the athlete experience. We're going to have amazing vendor sponsors, both endemic, non-endemic brands that are there. We're doing some really fun things. We've built out courtside box suites. We've got VIP area. I love it. We've got celebrities that are going to be there. We might even have a really cool flyover happening. We've got some cool stuff that we're going to do because we recognize that you're spending a lot of your time, money, and energy to come here. We want to make sure that it's special, and it's a time that everybody can be community together, whether you're on the court or not. And that's a lot of people to organize. It is. I mean, I've been to 1,000, 2,000 people tournaments, and it's a lot. Oh, it's a ton. Yeah, our competition team is amazing. It takes a village. You don't see kind of behind the scenes, and you've got 15 people that are back there. I mean, think about it. You're turning hundreds of matches an hour, right? And to keep it organized, our referees are the best. I mean, USA Pickleball referees are amazing. It's the best in class when you talk about training, all the certification that comes with it. So you know that if you're coming and playing in our national championships or a golden ticket, you're going to get the top referees. You're going to get top facilities. We do. You do. I mean, I have one at Mike, Big Mike. Everybody knows Big Mike. He's a nice guy. He's such a nice guy. I met him a couple times. He's really nice. But, you know, they're all great people. I mean, they put their time into this. They love it. Oh, yeah. They love what they're doing. And they're not getting rich. No. I can tell you they're not getting rich. It's beer money for them. It is. But that's the cool thing about it is, you know, they can make enough money where, look, it pays for their travel, make a little money. But they're there to be around the community of pickleball. You know, it's their friends. Some of their best friends are other referees and colleagues. It's the players. It's the athletes. It's the staff. And it's when people ask, like, what's a tournament like? Like, how do you describe it? And I always compare it to, like, when we go to church on Sundays and you see somebody new or somebody you don't know, you always want to welcome them in, right? You want to give that welcoming feeling. I like that. I look at our tournaments no different. We want to make sure that whether it's your first tournament, your 10th tournament, we want to make sure you feel welcome. We want you to be part of this family. And whether you win or lose that day, we want you to feel like you're walking away like, man, I had the best experience possible. They'll come back. And they'll come back. Totally. They'll come back because it is an intimidating sport. Oh, yes. And it can be, especially when you're like, what the heck is the kitchen? What does that even mean? Like, what is the three-number scoring? And it's weird at first. It really is. It is. And, of course, we all do. You know what our number one most visited site is on our website? It's HowDoYouPlayPickleball. HowDoYouPlayPickleball. That makes sense. Yeah. It's funny. Our SEO crushes it because everybody just says, HowDoYouPlayPickleball? And it goes to our website. In fact, we just launched our new website today. And we really revamped it to make sure that it was putting the athlete experience first, the resource first. HowDoYouPlayPickleball, what does that mean? Give me an example. We now have AI integrated where you've got an AI chatbot where you can go in and say, hey, I did this on a court. Is this illegal? Is it not legal? And it'll pop it right out. Wow. It'll spit it out. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. It's come a long way. Wow. It's scary sometimes too, but it's neat. So we've got our national events, which we believe is first in class. And we love to give the great athlete experience. In fact, we just did one in Colorado Springs this last year. It was a qualifier. One of our smaller ones at Peak Pickleball is an amazing facility. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were just there. Peak is what a place. Oh, yeah. 24 courts. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. So we're working this year. We have a handful of indoor courts that we're doing all around the country. We're doing on the rooftop in Vegas at the Plaza Hotel. Oh, my gosh. That is nice. Yeah. That'll be one that'll be fun and unique. Is that next year? That will be in February in Vegas. That'll be one of our qualifiers. And then our national championships, as I said, that's next month. That's awesome. And we have been prepping for this for 10 months now. So much goes into it. And what people don't realize is from restrooms to F&B to permits to parking- Parking. Oh, my gosh. Especially in California. Oh, yeah. It's been a doozy, but it's all right. We're converting the entire... It's a tennis facility, right? Oh, my gosh. They had 21 courts, and we're going to have 50 permanent courts, and then we'll have overflow of 12 practice courts at any given time. Oh, my gosh. Right? Wow. It's going to be one of the biggest facilities in the country, and we're converting it all. We're painting it. It's going to be beautiful. And you're half a mile from the beach. Oh, my gosh. You can see SeaWorld from it. Yeah, somebody said it was right by SeaWorld. You could see SeaWorld. It's right next to SeaWorld. Yeah. It's awesome. Wow. Yeah. And we can't wait to go, actually, now. We're ready. You guys have to come. We're still a member-based organization, and that's important. And one of the things that we did this last year was we added in different tiers of membership. Before, it used to be you're either a member or you're not. Yeah. It was either you paid or you didn't, where now you actually have a free membership, what we call is our casual membership. And so for that, that is one that you just want to be part of the family. You want to get content on a monthly basis. You want to know what's happening in USA Pickleball. You're still going to get a little bit of discounts from some of our partners and our DEMIC brands, but really that just kind of gets you into the funnel. Then you go into our challenger, where that allows you to go in and play in sanctioned tournaments all across the country. We have hundreds of sanctioned tournaments across the country, plus our own tournaments that qualify you for the nationals. It's $12. It's $12 a year to be a challenger membership. That's a good price. That's really good. It's great. And then we've got our champion membership, and that allows you a little deeper discounts, free balls, free X40s, free court time from Break the Love, a lot of other cool things. But ultimately, a lot of those dollars go back into what we're doing with USA Pickleball Serves, which is another part of our organization, something we launched about a year and a half ago, and really it's the why behind us as an organization. It's our heartbeat. We're big believers in we need to grow our youth. We need to grow the underserved. We need to grow the masses. We need to make sure that people are exposed to this sport, and we need to give access. So we do grants multiple times a year. This last year alone, we gave nearly a quarter of a million dollars away in grants. We also impacted close to 600,000 individuals, and through that we're building courts across the country. We did two this last year, and what that's doing is that's giving access. There's a huge court shortage right now, so if we can work with cities, nonprofits, schools, to build these permanent courts that are open to the public, that's going to give access and give folks the opportunity to play that may not have had the chance. We're giving equipment grants. We're working with schools and nonprofits all across the country to get paddles in kids' hands, nets, balls. We've got a great partner in Franklin that we work with, and our goal at the end of the day, and I shared this with you earlier, is if we can impact one kid, right? One kid. If maybe this kid was the shy kid that maybe didn't want to be active and now he's active, what a world that would be, and we're very fortunate. As I said, in a year and a half, we're close to 600,000 individuals that have been impacted through our programs through USA Pickleball Serves. We're going to continue to grow that, and so by being a champion member and through all of our corporate partners and everything else that we do, we funnel in money through our USA Pickleball Serves, and we're going to continue to grow that. Oh, my gosh. We were there. We were at the YMCA in Colorado Springs. What a 160 kids, which I don't know if I would have went if I'd known that. Someone said, Just show up. Just come. There's a few kids. But it was incredible. So well ran. We had a couple of the Broncos there. The kids just had the greatest time, and we didn't even play. They just got to experience what a pickleball paddle and the ball and how you'd play on a court a little bit. But it was so fun. Yeah, and we do those learn-to-play clinics at every stop that we do. So that's part of our mission is we do these clinics, and a lot of them are at YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs, schools, and we bring in anywhere from 50 to 100, 150. That was our biggest one. That was a big 160. That was our biggest one. Well, yeah, and that one was a funny one because Jake Plummer is a big fan of what we do. He's a big pickleball player. He's a phenomenal player, and we've gotten to know him over the last year or so, and he's like, man, I want to give back. I want to do something for the community. And I said, careful what you ask for, man. We're going to do this program. You want to come out and host it? And he did, and he rocked it. He did great, yeah. We had some other folks. I had actually my father-in-law out there, Rick Lewis. Oh, yeah. You know, color analyst for the Broncos and a big radio kind of legend here in town. And just everybody coming together and just giving back, and that's what it's about. And while maybe some of these kids had never played pickleball, to see Jake Plummer playing pickleball, right? Oh, it was big. To see Nick Ferguson playing pickleball, like that you identify with those idols of yours. They were listening. Totally. Yeah, I mean, their eyes were just glued on. Yeah, so that's what we want to do, and we do that in every city that we go to. And, you know, we can all think back in a time in a sport that we played where you can remember a coach or somebody that showed you how to do something or how to play properly, and that will stick with you for life. And our goal and hope is that these kids learn to play pickleball, they have access to pickleball, because that's the beautiful thing about this sport. You don't need a $500 bat. No. You don't need a whole baseball field, or you don't need a football field. You just need a paddle. You just need a uniform. No, no, you can have a makeshift net paddle. You're ready to go. And you can make friends. You can make friends. That's the biggest thing. And even go back to that, the one we went to, all the gear that you brought and left there for the YMCA was incredible. Yeah. So we were helping a little bit. You know, we were just trying to help. When we get somewhere, we don't want to sit there and watch people work. We want to help. And it was incredible what you guys did. That was awesome. I mean, so much gear. I was like, oh, no, those are their nets. That's their ball. I mean, you brought balls and paddles and nets for these people. So you're given – there's no reason they won't – they'll use these too. Yeah. Funny story about that. In college, when I said I worked with kids, that was the YMCA I worked at in college. Oh, was it really? At the Briargate YMCA. Colorado Springs. Yeah, I went to UCCS, graduated there, and I transferred down there. But, yeah, so I worked at that YMCA. So when it all worked out and we were working at the YMCA, they were like, hey, we've got a perfect YMCA. I'm like, that's great. I actually know it well. But, yeah, amazing event. Unfortunately, I had a family emergency. I couldn't be there, but I heard all about it. But all the staff that you had there, great people, and they knew what they were doing. Everybody was organized. Nobody got hurt. It was very well orchestrated. It didn't feel like there was 160 kids there. But it was well with all your mentors and all the people and your affiliations. It was awesome. Thank you. Want a pro-level pickleball court without pouring concrete? Discover Rollout Courts from Pickleball Management Group. They offer quick setup. The standard Rollout Court uses five textured polyvinyl rolls teamed together to make a 30 x 60 court, customizable. Or choose Pickle Deck, interlocking panels for any surface. Perfect for backyards, schools, events. The complete Pickle Deck system install in under two hours and saves big versus concrete or asphalt. Pickleball Management Group is an official sponsor of USA Pickleball, Pickleball Canada, the APP Tour, and the 2025 U.S. Open Pickleball Championships. Learn more at pickleballmanagement.com. Yeah, so obviously USA Pickleball serves as a big piece of what we do. Then our competition. I mean, we talked about referees. We always say it internally is in my department in marketing, we've got 23, 24, 25 staff. We do everything off the court. We need to make sure that our brand is top-notch. We need to make sure that people recognize what we do as an organization. It's making sure you have a great website that you can go to to see how do I play pickleball. It's our events that we do. It's our memberships of what we're doing. It's our social media. It's great content. But what's happening is on the court. We have some of the most brilliant individuals that have had really successful careers in pickleball. Steve Wong is a Hall of Fame pickleball player, and there's only a handful of them. You've got Lance, who is our tournament director, and he's a senior pro in pickleball. Justin Maloof, he's been in pickleball for many, many years. Really just great folks. Tom Tadler leads all of our referee program, and these guys are just passionate about it. They are ears to the ground. They understand what's going on. We want to make sure that if there's something new that we need to be aware of, if it's there to enhance, whether it's the safety or just even the competition as a whole, we want to know about it. We've got great team members that are managing that on a day-to-day basis. All that and our corporate partners. We have such amazing corporate partners that go back two and a half years ago, we had a handful of corporate partners, and now these last two and a half years, and we have big brands like QVC, Sandals Resort, Skechers, Franklin, both endemic, non-endemic, Selkirk's of the world. We've got them, and we're very selective. We get a lot of folks that come to us and say they want to be a partner, but if it's not right for us as an organization, if it doesn't align with our core values, sometimes the best deals you do are the ones you don't take. It is, absolutely. And so for us, we're very selective, and we want to make sure that we can also enhance their business too. We've got great stories working with our brands of why they started with USA Pickleball, and ultimately what it comes down to is just the sport is so hot, and it serves the masses. It serves the everyday person. It's the equalizer among people, and so we want our brand in front of that. Well, and I think your brand is also keeping it in some perspective control and not letting this get out of hand. When sports grow this fast, you're in the sports world. It becomes chaos, right? And I think you're keeping some of the chaos in line. I hate to say that, but that's the way it is. That's organized chaos. And it's an interesting thing coming here because coming from college football or NBA world, these sports have been around for 100 years where the Wild West I'm sure was happening 100 years ago where now it's like the Wild West is here at Pickleball. It is. You're just trying to get some structure. Yeah, and we're just trying to keep the peace too. At the end of the day, we want to be a resource for everybody out there. I don't care if you're a pro league. I don't care if you're a tournament director or a referee. We just want to be a resource for you guys and do good work and kind of be that North Star for all things Pickleball. Well, and I think being a nonprofit, that's a big word out there. This isn't just about money. It's about helping people first and foremost and making the sport a great sport. Yeah, and a lot of times people think, Oh my gosh, you're a nonprofit. How do you keep your lights on? It's not necessarily what a nonprofit means. No, I get it. As a governing body, we have to be a nonprofit status. We have to be neutral in everything that we do. But at the end of the day too, if we have a really, really great tournament or we do some really cool things and we make more money today than we did yesterday, it doesn't go into my pocket. It doesn't go into owner's pockets. It goes back out into the community. That's what I love. There's not just big bonuses being given from it. There's another court being built. There's another kids getting paddles. I mean, that has to come from somewhere. And I hate to say some of the big corporate companies, it's about the profit. And at the end of the day, does it help? It helps a little bit, but they help mainly themselves. Yeah, and once again, we're here to be neutral, keep the peace to the degree that we can. Sure, sure. But it is still the Wild West. It is the Wild West. It's working out and there's great people in this business, really wonderful people. And I'm sure you guys- We meet tons of them. Tons of them. Really great people that, you know, the stories that come from why they got into pickleball. We all have a story. We do. And whether you lost a loved one and now it helped you grieve or you needed to get healthy or you just wanted an activity to do with your kids and here you are. I mean, those stories we hear day in and day out. We feature them on our website. We feature them. You've seen them in Pickleball Magazine. And we want to shout those from the mountaintops because what a cool sport this is. We talked about at our nationals, I was sharing with you earlier, it's like we had a 93-year-old and we had a 7-year-old competing. Yeah. Name me another sport that you can have that big of a swing. When does that happen? Well, and I'm a coach. I teach, you know. And I do it from my heart. I don't charge for it. And the fun part with it is in 20 minutes I can have you play in pickleball. Yeah. Will you tell me a sport that you can grab a ball and a paddle and play in 20 minutes? Not many. Now you might not understand the score because I still don't and I haven't played in a while. Yeah. I'm just kidding. But, again, what sport do you know that you can walk on a court and start having fun? Yeah. I think that's the hardest part is the scoring. It is. It is. I think that's the brain thing. You're like, what? Yeah. Yeah. Well, some of us. Yeah. Hey, now. One's intimidating. And I feel like it's always that third number is what gets badly done. It's just keep the score. The third number, don't worry about that just yet. Yeah. Well, with my husband, I'm always keeping the score for him. Yeah. He goes, I don't understand this. I go, so, okay, one, one, one. It's just your server number. That's it. That's all it is. That's all it is. That's all it is. Don't overthink it. And then you only get one serve, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that throws everybody off, and you're number two. Yeah. Yep. So you got to call it start, because if you stay number two, it really throws the whole game off. I know. I know. It's fun, though. You actually get it? You're good. Get it, yeah. I actually do have it now. Well, until you start playing, and you get in your head about the game, and everybody comes back and says, who served it? Yeah. You know, when you have one of those good volleys, what happens? Oh, yeah. That's true. Oh, it happens. You get a brain fog. And you get an exit. I tell people my story is, you know, I owned a business for 40 years. A lot of work. Five children. Tired. I'm older. Oh, yeah. And when I walk on a court, no cell phones. Yep. No traffic. No employees. No, none of that good stuff. I get an exit, and smile, and hit a little plastic ball. Yeah. It's the best thing in the world. You could be a CEO. You can be an 18-year-old student. It doesn't matter what you are. It doesn't matter. It's the equalizer, and it's great. And listen, my Sundays or Wednesday nights when I play, when I play, it's great. It's great. It's great. It's our church. It's our barber shop. It's where you can talk freely, and you can have fun, and you can joke. But there's not many places you can do that. Right? It's your third home. Yeah. So do you play in your neighborhood, or do you play at a court? I do. No, I play in my neighborhood. Yeah. Which is a lot of them. Yeah. And I have to figure it out, because we just moved to Castle Rock. And to call it Castle Rock, I mean, it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. Yeah. And I have to figure it out, because we just moved to Castle Rock, and to Colorado as a whole. And so we're in Arizona. You can play year-round, where you have to figure out what's going to happen in the wintertime. Yeah. Well, I think that's why you see so many indoor courts opening here. Yeah. I mean, they're winter, and then summer comes back out. But they're building tons of outside courts too. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Everywhere. Yeah. No, it's great. I live three blocks from my courts. I ride my E-bike down there. Nice. Yeah. It's great. And there is great courts. I mean, obviously, we did a great event in Colorado Springs, and Scott's always saying, come down and play down here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we'll find a place that we can do indoors. But it's only like 30 minutes from Castle Rock, right? No, it's easy. It's an easy drive. From there, yeah. Yeah. It's probably easier than getting to Denver. It is sometimes, yeah. It is. The traffic's pretty gnarly coming up here. Yeah. But no, you know, the things you're doing all over the world, the things that you're doing. Like, I always laughed, because when I first got into it, I heard about the Golden Ticket. Yeah. And I thought it was like Willow Wonka Factory, right? Yeah. I kind of thought, that's your special, you have to get this ticket. And it's tough, though. You have to fight to get in. I mean, I've tried a couple times, and I didn't make it, you know? But I think it's awesome. It's great athletes. It is. Well, and it puts it, it gives you kind of a chance to see where you are, right? Like, how do you stack up against others? Yeah. And because there's nothing more humbling when you think you're the man, and you're great, and then you go play in a tournament, and you're like, whoa, I got a little work I got to do here. Yeah. Or, conversely, is like, you didn't have that confidence, and you go in, and you beat somebody that you thought would absolutely smoke you. Yeah. Yeah. It's, but that's great. That's the fun thing about, you know, this sport as a whole. And there's tournaments now all, every weekend. Oh, yeah. Everywhere. Anywhere you want to go. And so I think it's great just to get out there and get playing. And whether that's in our tournaments or in any others, I mean, obviously, we want them to be sanctioned tournaments because you're making sure you're using our rules, our paddle certifications, and, but at the end of the day, just getting out and getting active is what this is about. When your website is, what's my rating? Yeah. You even have on there, you can do a, a skill level. Yeah. I mean, you guys, you've thought of it all. It's all on there. So, I mean, if you guys want a good resource, go to their website. The now's all new, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I knew it. Fresh website. Yeah. USA pickleball.org. It's all fresh. Check it out. I mean, it was a labor of love for sure. It was 150 revamped pages. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, we took the player, right? We didn't do it from the necessarily vantage point of Jose Moreno, the CMO. I looked at this as we, we met with players. We, what do you guys want to see? What's important to you? We took the data. Where are people visiting most? When are they visiting most? How can we make sure that you don't have to go search for it and seek it out? Yeah. So when you'll see on our website, everything is right there. It's a beautiful site. Um, yeah, we, we, I'm very proud of the team. It's been a huge project for five months. Um, click, um, that does their name and they work with a lot of groups, um, you know, in the governing body space, uh, USA Volleyball, they just finished their site. And so, um, yeah, we brought them on and then we also have internal, uh, webmaster in our internal marketing team and we built it all out. I can't even matter because the last one, the one you had before it actually functioned pretty well. Yeah. I'd never had it. Yeah. No, go through it, check it out. Check out what's important to them. And yeah, you'll see it. It's a, we don't make you search for something anymore, you know, and like I said, having an AI chat bot function in there, ask any question you want. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So where's your, where's your, where's your future going for now? Well, I think as an organization, you know, 2026, we've got some, some big goals and objectives, some priorities that for us is obviously we want to continue to grow the sport. Yeah, it's important. How do we do that? We want to continue to build out programs. We've got our YPP, which are youth pickleball program program that we do. And, um, what that is is essentially it's curriculum that we give out free, you know, your teacher, your nonprofit, and you want to, you know, you want to start teaching and coaching pickleball. We will give you the curriculum to do that. So how do we get paddles in kids hands? How do we continue to grow our grant program? How do we build more courts? That's going to be a big focus for us in 2026. And we want to be able to shout from the mountaintops like we did this last year is we've impacted close to 600,000. Oh my God. I want that number to be a million next year. I love it. It will. It will. We will. Yeah. And we'll get there. Um, you know, we're really leaning into even just like leagues, you know, leagues is such an important piece of this sport. And I think that it's an untapped part of the sport. And we want to be kind of that leader in the bullpen of that. We want to make sure that we are working with good partners that offer really great technology. And we want to make sure that we can get more people active in playing in leagues because tournaments may not be for everyone. No. You know, we want to be able to say, Hey, I just want to, you know, join a league and have some fun on Wednesday nights. Great. We want to offer that for you. Um, our ambassadors are amazing. We've got close to 2000 ambassadors across the country. And we do know a few of them. They're wonderful. They're wonderful. Um, you know, these are, this is a volunteer role that they're passionate about the sport. They want to grow the sport. Uh, we've introduced this last year, uh, LMS training. And so what that is is now every ambassador is going to get the same training. So they're all going to get the proper training. And then in order to be an ambassador, you have to go through the training modules. That's great though. Yeah. Smart. And we had, we always did. It is. We always had some training, but anytime you can really digitize it and put the technology behind it, and now we can monitor who has been trained on what topics, you know, whereas we're out in the community, we get requests. Hey, we want to work with kids with special needs. Do you have anybody that's, that has a specialty in that? Well, we actually do. Um, we have a lot of citizens, you know, do you have anybody that has been trained at? We do. Um, so really focusing on that and making sure that, you know, the training and continuing education of the sport is top of mind for all of our ambassadors and anybody affiliated with our organization. Um, and then just continuing to build our brand and shouting from the mountaintops, what we do as the governing body as an organization, that's going to be important to us. You're going to see at any of our golden tickets moving forward in the future, you're going to walk in and at the very least you're going to be a part of it and you're going to know more about what we do as a governing body of this sport, because I think that's important. You always have to have that organization that you can lean on, um, in that time of need, whether it's questions on the rules, whether it's a resource, I want to build a pickleball court or just something happening and you just want like the single source of truth. That's where we want to live and we want to be in that space. Um, and memberships. We want to continue to grow our memberships. You know, whether you're a paid member or a free member, and we want to get, there's no reason why that number should not be in the millions. Yeah. Why not? I mean, why would you not? Why? I mean, it's great information. Yep. I know I'm part of it and I, I get all kinds of great, I'm, I'm a little bit more than that, but I mean we're, we get a lot of information, you know, part of it too. Well, we're leveling it up too. I mean, we are having the content that's going to start to come out here shortly. I mean right now, depending on what skill level you have, you know, part of our new website, we have a blog that you can go on there and you can start to search out, Hey, I want to learn. I want to be better at my serves. I want to be better at my bowling. I want to be better at, you know, working in the kitchen. We now will have content for all of that. Love it. And, and free of charge. You can go in there and get this information for free. So why don't you sign up for that, right? Thank you. It's free. USA Pickleball. I mean, I, I want to share this with people too. It's, it's kind of like we all have skied and snowboard, but are you a part of a USA skiing, snowboard? Are you a member of them? It's one of those sports where you don't necessarily need us in that sense, but we are a resource for you, right? I think everybody's doing it. They're skiing, they're snowboarding. We're playing pickleball. Why not go be a member? Yeah. And I think, I think that when you have something growing this fast, there's a lot of shy people and people that are just like, well, I don't, you know, I don't know much about, you know, Christana here, you know, she's our 2.0 or best and it's just good. Um, you know, but she, but she was quiet. She didn't want to ask what her Ernie was or what the, uh, you know, what is a, what's a, you know, what, what is a cross dink or, you know, she didn't have any of that terminology. So your resource is something they can go on. They don't have to ask anybody. It has everything right there. I was the one that took the court way over in the corner. That's all right. I think that it can be very welcoming and it should be welcoming because it's fun. It's pickleball. It should be fun. We have fun. I laugh a lot. I'm playing. Yeah. So, um, how we met you is through Scott with pickleball management. So how, what does he do? He has the rollout courts for you guys. He does. Yeah. They're official rolled court partner of USA pickleball. Okay. Yeah. He's a great guy too. Great guy. I like him sometimes. Yeah. No, he's a good guy. He's a great guy. Scott's wonderful. Yeah. We, we partnered with them starting last year at our national championships. He brought in 12 rolled courts as practice sports. And you, you helped with that, correct? If you're wondering why my arms are just so big, it's because I was moving those things, you know? No, those things are heavy. Boy, are they heavy. What a good court. Oh, great courts. I think he's got the best technology out there and Scott and Charlie too. I mean, they're, they will, I mean, point in case, you know, you guys were out in Utah and you did the thing with Macy Neely. We, Scott got her a court. Um, you guys were out there rolling it out. You saw firsthand what it takes and you know, Scott and Charlie are there themselves. Oh yeah. It's not just, Hey, I'm going to ship you the court. Good luck. They're out there because they take so much pride in the work that they're doing. They take pride in their technology. Um, you know, I mean, a tournament of our size, you don't really have practice courts. You just hope to get on a couple of minutes before your match is horrible, which I liked that having practice courts. Yeah. We'll have, uh, three of his dedicate, I think for action, sorry, dedicated to the world courts that are there just for practice. But then we'll also have, you know, anywhere from eight to 10 other tape line courts on the tennis court. Sure. But it's just there. You want to go in and dink a little bit before your, your match. Like why not? I mean, the technology is great. Scott's wonderful and just happens to be, he's in Colorado here too, which is great. Yeah. We get to see him quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. We, yeah, we love Scott. He's a great dude. Yeah. You can't go wrong. So, well this is awesome. This has been great. I mean, what we love today is how much information you brought about USA pickleball because I think there's still a lot of people that are, it's growing so fast that there's a blur, right? Yeah. But the, you guys are the ones, the leaders in pickleball. I'm just going to say that. I think you are, that you're, uh, you're doing great things and it goes from the youth to, to the older, to the tournaments, to the, you know, from the paddles to the courts. I mean, you're, you're touching every angle of it. Yeah. We have something for everybody. You do play in the sport. We have something for everybody and we want to, and if we don't call us up, right? We want to figure out how to, you know, we want to be doing our part as the governing body to help grow it. Well, and you got great people. We keep meeting a lot of people in your organization and they are just, they're just great. I mean, there has been, I mean, I'm not, you know, I, you just, you can tell there's, there's not, it's not chaos. It's well organized. The story's the same. Um, it's just awesome. So we, uh, we love to be part of it. So, uh, you know, we're going to be going live here soon. So you're going to be seeing our pretty faces. I love it. So that's great. My pretty face. That's great. Well, I hope to see you at the national championships. We're going to be there. So thank you so much. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thanks guys. Have a great day. Tired of the same old, same old, discover a sweet sip, nano CBD, sparkling sodas. 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