Chile

Submitted by John Sproehnle

John & Jean Sproehnle, USAPA ambassadors in Squaw Valley, CA, report that two of their star picklers, Nancy Bartusch & Reb Forte, brought pickleball to Chile on their annual summer (Chile's winter) ski holiday.

Skiing there is all above tree line. Since there's no visibility on storm days, bad weather created time for another favorite activity - pickleball.

They took a portable net, 4 paddles, and 12 indoor balls to the Hotel Portillo. The hotel has a full-sized gym. The center of the basketball court, with the addition of a few blue masking tape lines, set up perfectly for pickleball. They left the equipment there, after teaching several of the staff to play. Can we make them unofficial ambassadors to Chile?

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India

Submitted by Dick Manasseri

USAPA member Sunil Valavalkar is also the Founder and General Secretary of the All India Pickleball Association.  Sunil is a true Pickleball Pioneer with a love of the game who is teaching and promoting pickleball in his home country as a sport for all.

He played pickleball for the first time in Canada in 1999 and was so enamored with the sport that he visited a second time in 2006 to play some more.  When he returned home to India, he brought a few paddles and balls with him and started giving pickleball demonstrations to Mumbai sports lovers.

To his surprise, this sport was very warmly received by a cross section of the society. The majority of today's population in India is eager to play a sport which is easy to play, which would offer them fun and, at the same time, it would also make them fit. Pickleball is satisfying all these requirements of India's modern society and so there is an encouraging response for this sport. The AIPA was formed to promote pickleball in India.

I was most impressed with the AIPA Pledge (see photo and link http://www.aipa.in/Mission.html ) with its emphasis on the "Right to Play" for every citizen in India. As Sunil recently explained to me, "Pickleball is the only sport available for the average person. At my current camp, two persons who are physically challenged also played pickleball with ease. In wheelchairs, they played this sport with as able bodies as their opponents. That's the value of pickleball and, hence, I think we can demand the universal "Right of Play" through pickleball."

To learn more about this fascinating story, you can go to the All India website www.aipa.in . There you'll see in words, pictures, and video, the inspiring story of Sunil's success with attracting players of all ages and circumstances to pickleball on the other side of the globe.  The video link is http://www.aipa.in/Video.htm. Sunil has managed to introduce and promote Pickleball by aggressively working with the media http://www.aipa.in/Mediask.htm

Sunil has shown that Pickleball is truly a "Sport for All", a Lifetime Sport. We congratulate Sunil and all the players of the AIPA. Sunil has asked me to invite any USAPA travelers to India to contact him at sunilw@gicofindia.com just as we invite all AIPA players traveling to visit family and friends in North America to contact us at dmanasseri@usapa.org.