US Senior Pickleball is a nationwide, nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading the love of pickleball to seniors all around the country. USSP hosts tournaments and confers memberships like a typical pickleball club, but it breaks away from this conventional mold by not having a centralized facility. Karen Parish, the Director of Events, says, “We’re not a traditional club in that we don’t have one set location.” The USSP is a nationwide community held together by its array of tournaments and team of ambassadors.
“US Senior Pickleball is senior focussed and amateur driven,” says Parish. Spreading pickleball and promoting “fun, fitness, and friendship” are two of USSP’s broader goals, but its primary aim is to improve the pickleball scene for seniors in the US. The folks at USSP “support and celebrate” all expressions of professional pickleball, but they want to make sure that senior players’ needs and concerns are heard.
US Senior Pickleball began as a member of the Super Senior International Pickleball Association (SSIPA) and obtained status as an independent division of SSIPA in 2022. Since then, the USSP has been building itself up by holding tournaments and starting a new ambassador program.
USSP started its ambassador program in January and already has a growing roster of 135 ambassadors. Ambassadors are volunteers who are dedicated to sharing the love of pickleball with seniors in their area. They introduce seniors to the sport, build relationships with clubs and recreational communities, and share local concerns with US Senior Pickleball. Tara Morrissey, the Senior Brand Ambassador Director, remarks, “Our ambassadors are already connected not only to the clubs but to the recreational areas. Our ambassadors know their particular communities better than anyone.”
USSP is constantly looking for and adding new ambassadors to their team. New ambassadors go through a three-day webinar before going out into the world to share pickleball. Besides telling people about USSP, ambassadors volunteer at tournaments and help to promote those tournaments. Morrissey comments, “We’re trying to expand our ambassador base so that we can get out to more communities.”
Though ambassadors are volunteers, their help doesn’t go unrewarded. USSP has an appreciation system through which they show gratitude to their ambassadors by giving gifts. Besides getting the satisfaction of spreading pickleball, ambassadors receive all sorts of pickleball gear and tournament gift certificates.
Providing fun tournaments for seniors is a major part of USSP’s mission. There are a lot of USSP tournaments. On any given weekend, there is likely to be a tournament going on in some area of the country. USSP aims to make their tournaments fair and affordable: “One of the best things is that we don’t want seniors to be paying exorbitant fees to play in tournaments or go to a clinic.”
US Senior Pickleball hosts various kinds of pickleball tournaments including circuit series events, zone championships, and national championships. Circuit series events are put on by pickleball clubs all around the country, and USSP helps provide tournament guidelines, organizational help, and volunteer ambassadors. Morrissey says, “We work with club managers, and directors, and tournament directors, and it’s just a lot of fun.” Circuit series events are set up in a round-robin format, and the brackets are divided into five-year increments for players 50 years old and up. Brackets are also divided according to DUPR skill level.
Zone championships and the national championship are both run directly by USSP: “Those are our babies.”
Though not a traditional club, US Senior Pickleball sports an excellent membership program. Parish exclaims, “It’s an incredible system that we have.”The first thing aspiring members will notice is the shockingly low cost of membership—20 dollars a year (or 50 dollars for 3 years). Members receive all kinds of perks like newsletters, 10-dollar tournament discounts, and an national level USSP point system.
The USSP point system is a fun way for members from different states to share friendly competition with one another. By going to USSP events and performing well, members can rack up points on the scoreboard rankings which get posted in every newsletter. At the end of each year, the top ten scorers in each age/skill bracket are given prizes like tumblers, hats, jackets, and gift certificates.
Those at USSP are optimistic and excited about what the future has to hold. They currently have a membership base of about 11,000 players which continues to grow each day alongside a growing roster of ambassadors. As their membership base, ambassador team, and overall influence grows, the folks at US Senior Pickleball hope to continue spreading their love for pickleball to seniors everywhere.
