Welcome And Book Announcement

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi, I'm Shelly Mauer. And I'm Cher Emmerich. Welcome to Life Lessons from Pickleball.

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Where we engage with pickleball players from around the world about life on and off the court. Thanks for joining us.

Introducing Susan “Dinker Bell” Swern

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Before we get started, we have something really exciting to share. Our book, Life Lessons from Pickleball, is now available on Amazon, and a portion of every sale is donated to Operation PaddleLift.

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Your purchase helps deliver paddles, nets, and resources to underserved communities around the world.

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Thank you for being a part of Growing the Game We All Love. Now let's jump into today's episode. Welcome everyone to Life Lessons from Pickleball. Oh, today we are honored to welcome someone many people in the pickleball world know affectionately as Dinker Bell, Susan Swern.

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Susan is the founder of the Pickleball for Good Fund, a nonprofit built around a powerful idea that pickleball can bring opportunity, connection, and hope to communities around the world.

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With more than 35 years in nonprofit development and her current work with Global Green Grants Fund, Susan has spent her career helping grassroots organizations create meaningful change.

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Recently, Susan took that mission globally through the project Operation Paddle Lift, traveling across East Africa with a suitcase filled with paddles, balls, and portable nets, helping spark new pickleball communities in places where access to equipment simply doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Susan, we're really excited to have you with us here today and truly grateful for the work that you're doing to bring pickleball to communities around the world. In fact, we're so appreciative. We're donating a portion of the proceeds from our life lessons from pickleball paperbook and ebook. You're holding it up to support Operation Paddle Lift. But before we learn about your work, we always love to hear how Pickleball first entered someone's life. So take us back to the beginning and what was happening in your life when Pickleball showed up.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Sure. And thank you so much for uh having me on the show. When I read your book, I mean there's so many stories of how Pickleball has changed lives for the better and what meaning people have found in starting to play it and where it then took them on their life journey. So thank you so much for having me on the show. And to Ruth Rosenquist, who is the um person who introduced us. She is the chair of our community development committee for Global Pickleball Federation. And that's the that's the cause that your book is helping to support. So thank you, thank you both tremendously. Um, so I talk about pickleball as a pickleball love story, which I think a lot of other people have. Uh, a friend of mine over probably 10 years ago, I was a tennis player. I even played in a women's tennis league. I wasn't great, I was like a three and a half, you know, 3.5 player, but I had played ever since I was a little kid. My dad taught me how to play. And so my friend Dee Dee said, you know, there's a sport I started playing. Have you heard about pickleball? And I'm like, no. She said, Well, I think you're going to be a natural given that you're kind of athletic, you're fit, and um, and I think you should, you know, come out with me. So we went in, I live in Colorado outside of Boulder, and we went to the Lafayette Rec Center, which a lot of pickleball players started playing inside rec centers. So it was free, and I had to borrow a paddle. I had no clue of the rules, I had no clue of the scoring, and I just played and I was like, oh, this is cool, this is fun. And it was on the parquet wood floors, which of course has 10,000 lines on it. But I saw everybody else having so much fun. And but interestingly, I still didn't fall in love. It was kind of like a first date, and uh, because I was still playing, I was still able to play tennis. And so back in COVID time in 2020, some other women friends of mine started playing more regularly and they invited me to come out. And that's when we really started flirting and then become, you know, uh steady partners, and then a complete love story, and now a completely lifetime committed relationship. So we started playing on an outdoor court. Um, four people led to six, led to eight, and there was only a single court. And within two months after I started playing, I introduced another friend who had uh a background in sports management, and I had been in fundraising, and we launched a women's league. So that that the way I kind of been reflecting on it is it just started as a game, you know, something other than tennis and racquetball and other racket sports. And then it's now but it became a passion, and then now it's a profession. It's it's really a calling for me right now. And hopefully your listeners will stay tuned for just all the ways that now I see pickleball as so much more than a game. It's really a game changer in my life and so many other people.

A Father’s Legacy And Joy At 100

SPEAKER_02 5:12

In fact, two things. One is when pickleball entered your life, so did another four-legged friend named Ruben, I believe. And Ruben is there, who may periodically show up on the screen. There's beautiful Reuben. Oh my God, so adorable. And you mentioned that today is kind of an auspicious day around pickleball and your parents. Can you say something about that?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah, because I think it goes to um so many of us, our childhoods have influenced us in so many ways, and certainly our relationship to sports and activities and our values, our personalities, and and things like that. And so really, without us even knowing it when we planned the date of this, a year ago, today, um, after a hundred years, a hundred and five, a hundred years and five months, my father Leonard passed away peacefully. Um, on Monday, March 10th, actually, in 2025, um, I got a call from my father's aide that he was gasping his last breath. And again, he was hundred, he lived a great, fabulous, pampered long life. He taught me every sport under the sun. And um, and four days before that, he was so well and so with it that from his lounger chair, I had brought paddles with me about six months before then, because he knew that I had launched Pickleball for good fun. So he's always inquisitive and asking me. He would see commercials on TV from Humana and all these, you know, companies that were starting to use pickleball in their marketing. And I just threw the ball at him and he hit it to me literally every single time. I have it on video. So this is not, this is a truthful story. And um, the look on his face, and if I choke up, I might do that because my father and my mother both encouraged my sister and I to kind of be balanced in kind of the masculine and feminine of what we, you know, of our generation. I'm 67 now, my sister's approaching three years older than me. And, you know, so I, you know, sports was what he called the male thing. And, you know, my mother was not a typical female. And so it it this really this day is in is not just in memory of my dad, but is really um it could have been a really sad day for me, but connecting this sport to my one of my last encounters with him, that seeing the joy on his face, that at a hundred he was learning a new sport, and I was teaching him what a dink meant, and all of that stuff is is so etched in my soul that um I feel incredibly grateful and blessed that the sport brought this that moment four days before he passed.

Creating The Dinker Bell Persona

SPEAKER_02 8:15

That is beyond touching, Susan. We feel him, we feel him and your mama too, very present today, and they are celebrating all of this and all that you're doing now with this amazing game. How did you get the nickname Dinker Bill?

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Um, so I have, even though I'm in fundraising, fundraising is sort of like the kissing cousin of marketing, and I've always loved that and creating kind of brands. It just was, I don't know, my my brain just thinks that way. And when I started thinking about the dink, because there is no dink in tennis, um, and then I have a very extroverted social butterfly personality. So when we launched this female league, this woman's league, well, within a short period of time, we had drop-in locations, like six of them, and we had ambassadors, all new people were coming to play, all women. We welcomed men, but it was mostly for our women friends. And it was during COVID, so it brought people out, you know, from their loneliness, from their depression, from their isolation, from everything, being sedentary, being afraid to go out. So it was a blessing to all of us then. And when we did a tournament, I kind of wanted to adopt a personality, and so the name Dinker Bell came up for me instead of Tinkerbell, because Tinkerbell is like the little fairy, and she has the wings and she has her little fairy dust. And so I literally put on purple wings and was flitting around our tournament talking to people with our microphone and just, you know, kind of keeping people engaged, even if they weren't playing or if they were spectators. And so that's you know, kind of my aka Dinker Bell is what I go by because um I do feel I spread the I'm such an ambassador for the sport that I spread the fairy dust and because um I flit around, I'm a social butterfly, so I guess it fits.

Why Start Pickleball For Good Fund

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah, that's awesome. What inspired you to start the Pickleball for Good Fund?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Uh thanks. That's a great, obviously, a really important question. So where I work in my day job at uh Global Green Grants Fund, I've learned a tremendous amount over the last seven years. And part of what we do is we make grants uh across the world uh where grassroots groups are fighting not just to save their uh their communities environmentally, but also it's an environmental justice lens. And so it brings together uh land rights, legal rights, uh our focus is on women and girls, it's on indigenous people and uh, but really the grassroots of people who all they need is resources. They have they have the wisdom, they have the drive, they have the passion. And so our organization is a funder, basically. And so it kind of just dawned on me that pickleball could also be that type of change maker where it isn't just a game, it's a game changer environmentally, economically, social impact. And I don't mean social just like going and having a social life, but again, in my field, social impact is much broader than just socializing, of which pickleball is mainly so different from tennis. The whole social network of pickleball was very different for me than than tennis was. Um, and not to not to be disingenuous about what tennis gave me. Um, but the way I see it is tennis literally has love in its scoring, which pickleball doesn't, but pickleball showed me love in such a broader, deeper way.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

That's so true. Our experience too.

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Yeah.

Grants That Change Lives: Project Flex

What Is Operation Paddle Lift

SPEAKER_01 12:01

So what happened was I I thought, okay, how could I replicate in a way what the values of what Global Green Grants Fund is doing in the environmental justice space? And it just started resonating for me. And I don't know about anybody else or you guys, when you get an idea and you just get flooded and you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't just stop, you know, you shouldn't turn on your cell phone or your computer, and you do it anyway, and you record all these ideas because you don't want to lose them at our age. And so it began as that. And so we got the 501c3. And and although I'm the founder and kind of the brainchild, obviously, this is a work of several people. We have a board of directors that's all volunteer. Um, I still have a day job, they still are working, even though some of us might wouldn't mind retiring, but don't. Um, my mother didn't retire till the day day before she died, actually, and dad didn't retire till 75. I don't think my sister's retiring anytime soon in her 70s, you know, hitting 70. Um, because we have purpose. And so I think that's what pickleball has kind of a lot of people talk about that is, you know, pickleball with a purpose. And that's why it's a calling for me. It doesn't feel like work. And that's what happened. Pickleball for Good Fund is a grant-making organization. Um, we're trying to raise, uh, at least in our first year, several hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to make the grants. Of already, we probably have 20 different nonprofits who have reached out to us in the United States and internationally because they need equipment, they need courts, they need programmatic support, um, they need um, you know, converting maybe a basketball court and lining it, but they also need curriculum and just basically a partner. And that's what we want to be is a teammate with these visionaries. We call them game changers, who have an idea of how pickleball is, you know, for younger kids, it's social emotional learning. One organization that I found out about online that's gonna become a grantee is called Um it's in Illinois and it's called, oh gosh, of course I'm gonna forget the name. I'll remember in a second. And um they work in the juvenile justice system. Oh, Project Flex Pickleball. So they were using other sports, and then the directors who are academics started playing. One of them started playing, and about five years ago or so, four years ago, she launched the pickleball component. And it takes the kids that are or the young men that are in the juvenile justice system outside into a Chicago suburban park, and the one of the first times they played, one of the stories that completely validated why pickleball for good was so needed, was um, you know, these are youth that have pretty done some pretty bad things. Um, but this program is teaching them so much about life skills on and off the court. They get to go to academic programs, they might want to now become a professional pro or a run a run a program. And one of the first comments that again choked me up because I'm a crier. I might be picking Dinkerbell, but I'm also a crier. And what Dr. Jen told me was some of the feedback that they got, which is on our website, is they had never been to a public park before. Um, they thought they were playing in one of their first tournaments, and they thought they could beat an older woman and she beat the pants off of him. Uh and he was like 16, you know, you know, 15, 16, 17. And then the one that really choked me up was uh apparently they were playing and very exuberant. You know, these are young men, they're happy to be out of the juvenile center. They um they were had a boom box that was playing rap or hip-hop, and a man came over, and all of these men were black, this man was white. And typically, if that happened on the street, this encounter wouldn't have happened this way. They thought he was gonna tell them to lower the music and be quiet because he was playing. He comes over to them and he looks at them and he says, Hey, you guys look like you're having a really great time. Can I join you? Oh that experience for these young men was life-changing. They had never been accepted for just something other than the fact that they had done uh made poor judgment and done illegal things. And the the now she's reporting that they don't get into trouble because this is a perk. And now that they got a million-dollar grant from the state, she wants to extend it to the girl. So, again, all of my encounters since developing this idea are people who have brilliant ideas. They're very passionate about how pickleball can change lives and change, and I say it changes communities, it can change countries now that I've come back from the uh the African continent and and have learned so much from that trip.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

In fact, that's a perfect I mean God, what great stories. Thank you so much for that. And oh, very touching. Um, but you have just come back from Africa uh with Operation Paddle Lift. So tell us what Operation Paddle Lift is, and then tell us about your trip. You bet.

East Africa Journey And Gear Delivery

Schools Mobilize And Early Momentum

SPEAKER_01 17:25

So I mentioned Ruth Rosenquist, she is on the board of Global Pickleball Federation, which is an official partner of um Pickleball for Good Fund. And I sat, she asked me if I could sit on their community development committee, for which she's a chair. And on that committee with other very motivated people, one of the biggest problems with growing this sport internationally is the gear gap. So whether it's paddles, balls, nets, quartz, um that is the biggest barrier to entry. Not passion, not desire, not people who want to bring it, but the gear. So um we named it Operation Paddle Lift, and we launched it on Pickleball for Good Fund to raise$20,000 because the shipping cost to ship a starter kit, which is comprised of four new nets, uh, all of us donated, uh partly from the Good Sport Foundation. So four nets, 20, 36 balls, I think, and uh 24 paddles or 20 paddles, something to that effect. And it's heavy and it almost costs a thousand dollars on average to ship it to these international countries. So it's not just Africa, the African continent, it's it's everywhere. And there are, I think, 76 member countries of global pickleball federation, and some of them have requested these kits over a year ago. They've been waiting patiently, and so we wanted to step in because again, I'm a you know, we are a fundraiser, and yet we only have raised probably almost close to 3,000. So we need another 17,000. So if any of these listeners want to go to www.pickleballforgood.org, um, we're every dollar makes a difference. And if you're in a position to uh champion a country, a thousand dollars, you can even pick which country you want to champion of the list of 20 that are still waiting. So that was that's Operation Padelift. And so, as synchronicity would have it in my day job, because we're an all-global team, we were having an all-staff meeting in Nairobi that I found out about in November. Once I learned that, I was eligible for sabbatical. So I asked them, oh, could I start my six-week paid sabbatical right after Nairobi? And they said, sure, because Collins Munene, who's the Secretary General of Confederation of African Pickleball, he sits on the Operation Paddle Lift or the Community Development Committee with me. He lives in Kenya, and um, so he orchestrated me to stay an additional three weeks after this work meeting that I was getting paid for from my day job. And my flight was almost all paid for, and um, I was already on the continent. So, I mean, again, all these synchronicities made it possible. And then Ruth says, Susan, could you bring equipment with you? Because again, it's so expensive to ship. I said, sure. So the suitcase, my parents were world travelers, which gave my sister and I also the bug. So their huge suitcase, I had 54 donated paddles that were donated from pickleheads, they were donated from the Good Sport Foundation, they were donated by a sponsor of ours, Pickle for the People, located here in Colorado. Balls were donated by a pickleball friend that I met, uh, Moment Pickleball uh gave me 48 brand new balls, and then another 10 balls were donated by, I believe, the Good Sport Foundation. And so I schlepped that. The bag had the 54 paddles, and my friend designed the Octobag, which is an amazing pickleball uh bag. Uh, it's spelled OKTO, and they're a sponsor of Pickleball for Good Fund. Anyway, I filled that up with 58 balls. Unfortunately, when I got to customs, the balls passed through, but the paddles we had a little bit of a problem with. I had to pay a customs charge for that. It was still less than shipping them. But now the last bunch went to Madagascar. They went to uh four, I think four countries. These 54 paddles now are in the hands of mostly children and some adults, so that they could just get their find their puppet pickleball love story. And some of these nets are completely made by their vocational school where it's like piping and a net that might have been a tennis net that doesn't even have a top to it, so the ball goes through instead of skipping over it. I mean, I I saw kids playing without sneakers on, and they were, you know, it was, but their passion for it, they don't need$300 paddles. They don't. Need$500 permanent mitts. They don't need$10,000 courts. They were playing with flimsy stuff, and yet everyone kept coming back. The joy that they found, and that's where I'm wearing is this is um see it's Uganda. That was one of the countries. So I was in Kenya, in Rwanda, and in Uganda, and then I went to South Africa um for a private, a private kind of pickleball moment instead of just the federations, because basically I visited the federation staff in each of those countries. This, and I don't even have a lot of yellow, but I'm kind of loving this jacket that they did. Oh, it's from the Ugandan Secondary School Sports Associations. So my uh uh Regina, who's the the director of development, uh sport development for the Confederation of African Pickleball, which Collins is Secretary General, uh, she took me to them. And just recently, this USSA agreed to have pickleball as a demonstration sport, even before the Ministry of Sports approves it. So they just got so excited at an NGO level that they want to now promote it in all of their districts. And because of the press that I got, you know, that got covered because of my trip. Again, I'm the messenger. It's not because of me, but I am the ambassador person. Um, or I'm calling myself the pickleball envoy. And they have schools coming out of the woodwork reaching out to them saying, we want you to come to our school. And again, these are schools that five paddles will make a difference. Um, a a replacement net, not even a net with the, you know, I mean, they need so much less than than what you can imagine to make this sport truly a sport for all across this entire continent and internationally.

Building Sustainable Local Programs

SPEAKER_00 23:57

As I'm listening to you talk about this, I'm trying to imagine. So you deliver the nets, the balls, the paddles to a community. What is the sustainability of that look like?

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Great question. So each one of these communities either has a volunteer who brings the sport to the school from outside the school. So for instance, I met Brian. Brian has in Nairobi is owner of Nairobi Pickleball Club. It's a pay-for-play club, but he is the number one player in Kenya. He goes to the schools for free and brings a temporary net and then brings the paddles and then coaches the uh athletic director and any of the teachers that are teaching other sports. Like, you know, the African continent is crazy about sports. So they have what we would call soccer, they call football, or vice versa. Um and they have many other sports that they champion. And now uh pickleball is starting to take root. And so by revisiting, that's how the programs can get sustained, also with the role of pickleball for good fund and mostly Global Pickleball Federation, because they're developing the train the trainers programs, they're helping with um uh professional certification for coaching, they're also helping with professional certification for referees. That again, we believe that this is as much a um sport for recreation, but in the competitive market, it's jobs, it's professional play, it's Olympic play. And that's really the core goal is to make it so popular that people rise through the ranks and become skilled players, and then we can we can get it finally approved, maybe by Brisbane, uh, to be in the Olympics as a as a uh officially recognized sport, Olympic sport.

Greening The Sport And Paddle Drives

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Well, for a Dinker Bell, you're quite a powerhouse, my dear. I am just it's so impressive what you've been able to do in such a short period of time, and the collaborations around the world and Global Pickleball Federation being an umbrella, and the fact that each country is now becoming its a federation member, and that there's everything is being organized in a way that it can be supported and sustained. Shelly, your question was so perfect because it can it can just pop up in little areas and then one person goes and then the whole program goes away. But you're making this so that it really is globally sustainable, and we are looking forward to when pickleball is in the Olympics, which we know you're all working toward as well.

Life Lessons: Purpose, Age, And Legacy

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Before you ask the next question, I did have a little kind of a footnote to this too about sustainability. Because for me, because of also what I do during my day job, sustainability also translates into environmental sustainability. And so one of the platforms on Pickleball for Good Fund um is the kind of go uh the green sports um movement. And the Green Sports Alliance is one of our promotional partners because with all the plastic, with all the carbon, with all the single-use plastic water bottles, we are passionate. Pickleball for good fund is passionate about being an ambassador to green the sport. And so we would have a special fund that will give grants in order to green the sport. So we know that there are pickleballs that are compostable or biodegradable. We want to get those out into the universe. Paddle companies, pickle for the people, is making a um uh a paddle that can be put in the landfill and it can be degraded and be able to use otherwise. Other companies like Revelin, who was one of the first paddle companies I came across that had a sustainable paddle that was also performance. And uh, and so that's another form of sustainability because we don't want to grow the sport and then be hurting the planet. So the way that I've we've captured this is in the brand of no planet, no pickleball. So I've also launched a brand which will create apparel that are all eco-friendly as well as accessories, and also championing the country, the companies like Octo, uh Pickle for the People, Revelin, um the Compositeball, and there's some others, Komodo, and everybody that's really trying to see that sustainability goes beyond programmatic. Uh, because without Earth as our court, we won't have pickleball courts to really play on in a safe way. Right. Here in Colorado, the the the heat and the drought and all of that, I mean, for me, climate change is really real. And um I feel very serious that sports contribute to climate change. And um, we could all do our part. And the other part of that is we want to do a paddle drive program. So I want to go around to the um facilities where maybe for a month or whatever they announce that this is their paddle drive. So, I mean, I don't know about you, but because I've been playing for six years, I have three other paddles that I don't play with anymore because I have my current one. And so we want people, this audience, to uh to stay tuned about how you can donate your used paddle. And even if it's scratch, we want to ship an entire container to uh the Confederation of African Pickleball because they will take these paddles, they don't care how used they are. One of the paddles that I saw had the entire edge torn off, and the whole thing was stripped, and that child still loved to play with that paddle. It didn't matter the condition. Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Oh, yeah, that was an important addition. I really appreciate that uh addition to sustainability, including sustaining the planet. Wow. So with all this adventure you've been on, my dear, on and off the court, uh tell us what life lessons you've gleaned.

How To Support And Closing

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Um, when you first when I first knew that was going to be the question, because that's the podcast and that's your book, you know. I think you said only share one or two. So it's a really hard Go for it. Go for it. It's a really hard question to answer. But if I were to distill it down again, thinking about my parents and today, particularly my my dad, um I wouldn't say age is just a number, but it is a mindset. The fact that my father would want to pick up a paddle at a hundred years old and actually put himself in that place to even if he felt he couldn't do it. Because a lot of people who are that age don't want to try new things because they don't want to disappoint themselves. They don't want to see maybe that they can't do it, because if they can't, that's that's not that's not psychologically good for them. And because his memory was starting obviously to fade. He didn't have dementia or Alzheimer's, but it was fading. He was on it, he was on it, and also for me, starting to play pickleball at 59, and now I'm 67. So, and I still not retired. I've launched three brands because I've also launched a consulting company in this space called Global Pickleball Partners, and I mean, I'm just like my mom. I mean, I just don't see myself ever retiring. And, you know, while financial considerations are always part of that, but that's 67. I I always say I'm kind of immature from my age. So I'm sure a lot of our listeners around in their 50s and 60s and 70s, I mean, they're people playing into their 90s, and I just think that that's what pickleball teaches us, that it truly is intergenerational. And the story about my dad is the supreme story about pickleball at any age, you know? So that I'd say is a really important one. And of course, a lot of pickleball as you advance more competitively, my friend Dottie teaches that the mental game is really important, and so that kind of goes with that one. Um the other life lesson when you find your calling or your passion, whether that's in a person, whether that's in your religious organization, whether that's in your friendships, your work. Um it does, you know, for me, I have a day job, yes, and I love our mission. And that yeah, pickleball is a calling. And when that happens, it it truly is for me pickleball with a purpose. You know, I I I am the age I'm at, I don't have children other than Ruben. Little Ruben, and it's my legacy. So I know a lot of people that are young don't think about their legacy, but I do feel that this is flowing through me because I was meant to do it in my unique way. So I think everybody has that in them. I think that whether it's pickleball, whether it introduced you to your life partner or it got your divorce going ahead or whatever. I mean, I do think pickleball is not just a game, it is a game changer if you let it be, whether on the inside, the outside, or anything else. And for me, this trip to the African continent and I've done other travel at 50, I did a volunteer vacation to teach English in Thailand. But this experience, I could have never orchestrated it. There was something behind it, and whether you call it law of attraction, whether you call it synchronicity, whether you call, wait, Susan, you saw an opportunity and you went for it. Or for religious people, they want to call it God. I don't, I you you call it what it is, but it was meant to be, and being raised Jewish with word we would use is shirt. It was just meant to be that this sport came into my life, and that's my life lesson. Pickleball is my life lesson now at this stage of my life.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

And we're so glad that you've entered the world with this passion and this drive, and we want our viewers and listeners to know how to support Operation Paddle Lift. Of course, one way is to buy our ebook or our paperback book and buy them for yourself, your friends, your family, for tournaments, for events, and you're holding up our book even now. Thank you so much. So, what is another way people can support Operation Paddle Lift and Pickleball for Good?

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Um, thank you. So our URL is www.pickleballforgood.org. Uh, and the four is F O R, not the number. In the middle of the page is Operation Paddle Lift as our featured fundraiser. You just click on the donate button and you can go there. But I encourage you to read the articles. I mean, the blog posts, and we're gonna be posting shortly. We have a marketing communications committee meeting um this week and a board meeting, and we're gonna get those four articles that were written about my trip in um Uganda. And one of them is a story of a five-year-old boy who I went over to. He was wasn't even playing with a real paddle, he was just standing around watching the other uh college kids play. And I went over to him and he started hitting the ball. And I gave him my paddle, my Ben Johns Perseus paddle, and we I started throwing at it like my hundred-year-old dad. I was doing it with this five-year-old. He he they hadn't taken him out in the court very much, but he was their ball boy sometimes. His mother is a teacher there, so we have a whole article about this five-year-old kid. He could be the next, you know, Annalie Waters in male form. I mean, we have no idea the trajectory of a life that could change. And even if he just decides to play recreationally as he becomes a college student eventually from five years old. But his mother was so happy that he got the chance to play. And um, so anyway, so that could support. We I really want to push supporting Operation Paddle Lift. Yes, we general donations would go to help us make um grants in the United States, but this spread of the sport internationally is really near and dear to my heart. So, and we because we have 17,000 more dollars to go and we want to end the campaign by the end of March, so I'm rooting for people to get caught by the fact that a little bit of money goes a long way. And if they could support Operation Paddle Lift, sure they can come back and support us more generally, too.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I know you've already touched a lot of hearts, you certainly touched ours, and we are so grateful for everything you're doing. And thank you so much for being on the show today, Susan Dinkerbell. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Surely my pleasure. What are your nicknames, by the way? Do you have court nicknames? No, but I want one now. No, we need to. You need to name us.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Yeah, we don't have any nicknames except hey, you and you miss that.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

I would have to come to Washington State. I used to live in Spokane for three years. I still have very good friends there. So I would have to come play with you. And then, but it's sort of like when you name your dog, it just kind of comes to you like what fits your personality, or and again, I shared with you what the meaning of Dinker Bell meant for me. And it actually was out there. I actually had a hat and I have t-shirts because somebody else branded it. And uh I now have clothing with Dinker Bell without the E at the end. So it's and it's one word.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

But I'll help you.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

If you if you reach out to me after you pick yours, I'm happy to help you.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

All right. Well, well, we're waiting to see you on the court. Thank you, and thank you so much. Really appreciate you being with us. And thank you all. Oh my gosh. Go to Pickleball for Good, Operation Padalist, buy our book, give it to everybody you know. As uh Susan says, it's just chocolate full of wonderful, inspiring stories and life lessons. So thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to a new conversation next week. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Bye-bye. Bye, Ruben. Say bye.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Bye, Ruben.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

If you love our podcast, we'd be so grateful if you'd take a few seconds to follow or subscribe to Life Lessons from Pickleball. This ensures you'll never miss an episode and helps us continue these wonderful conversations.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, go to the show page and tap the follow button in the top right corner. And on YouTube, click the subscribe button under any of the episodes. Thanks so much. Hope to see you on the court.