DPUSA PRESIDENT’S ANNOUNCEMENT

March 2026

Transcript:

DPUSA President Video Announcement March 6 2026

Hello, I’m Janice Smith, DPUSA President. I have a few announcements to make. The DPUSA Board Members had a meeting last week Sunday, March 6th. Three things I would like to share with you.

Any one of you who is hosting a Deaf Pickleball event or tournament, please send your flyer to our Social Media Specialist, Julia Hong at DPUSAmembers.at.large1@gmail.com. Julia will post on the DPUSA Facebook and IG pages to help the clubs promote your events.

We, the DPUSA board members, are thrilled to share that DPUSA Vice President, Estella Bustamante, will facilitate two different new committees. The first one is called the Deaf Pickleball Club Advisory Committee. The second one is called the Deaf Pickleball Players’ Council Advisory Committee.

The first group will have the presidents of the various local deaf pickleball clubs from different States nationally involved in this meeting. The other meeting is for players who are eager to be involved in this committee to give feedback to the DPUSA Board related to different rules and other topics. If you are interested in being in the Deaf Pickleball Players’ Council Advisory Committee, please contact Estella at her email which is DPUSAVP@gmail.com. The first committee mentioned is for current presidents of deaf pickleball clubs. Please, those who are presidents of their local deaf pickleball clubs, reach out to Estella.

The DPUSA Board Members want to wish the National Youth Pickleball Players who are playing in the national level tournament next week at Gallaudet University good luck! We also wish the players who are participating in various tournaments nationally good luck and have fun!

February 2026

Transcript:

DPUSA President Video Announcement – Feb 15 2026

Hello! I’m Janice Smith, DPUSA President. First, I want to share with you all. My last name has changed. Before, it was Janice Smith Warshaw. Now, I am back to my maiden name which is Janice Smith. I will be using this name going forward.

In this video, I want to discuss board positions. Jeff Lubman, the DPUSA Resource Development Specialist, decided to resign due to health reasons. The board members want to recognize and express gratitude for Jeff’s active involvement the last year and a half. Recently, he hosted the ASL Variety Show which was a wonderful event and raised $2,000.00 and donated to DPUSA. We truly appreciated Jeff’s dedication to DPUSA. We will miss working with him.

Jeff’s position is now vacant and will be the Interim Resource Development Specialist position. This position is from March to October, 2026. If you are interested and you are curious about what this position entails to, it focuses on marketing, branding (for example, protect our logo to make sure no one else copies it), look for possible sponsorships or donors to the DPUSA organization and tournaments, and they are also responsible for the DPUR rating system in between tournaments. During the actual tournaments, another person is responsible for the DPUR rating system. If you are interested, please contact me directly at dpusapresident@gmail.com. I hope you will apply!

At the DPUSA’s general business meeting on October 8th, we have three board positions that are due for election. Those positions are the Vice President, Treasurer, and Resource Development Specialist. If you are interested, you must be sure to look at the by-laws. In the by-laws, it states that in order to apply for one of the board members, you must be a DPUSA member in good standing for at least one year.

If you are interested in nominating yourself for one of the board positions, please contact Sherry Duhon, Nominating Chair at sherryd354@gmail.com before August 1, 2026. Please send her a video less than 3 minutes long introducing yourself, how long you have been involved in pickleball, and which board position you are interested in applying for. I hope you will be eager to get involved and work with us!

We, the Board Team, appreciate your support to the DPUSA organization. More information about the National Tournament this October is coming soon!

November 2025

Transcript:

DPUSA President Janice Smith-Warshaw Announcement for November 2025

The DPUSA Board approved and ratified the DPUSA 2025 bylaws on October 9, 2025, during the general business meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. It is now available for viewing on the DPUSA website: Deaf Pickleball USA
The DPUSA Board Members met yesterday and discussed selecting our Tournament Director. This person will serve on the board as the Director of National Tournaments. First, I would like to provide an overview of this person’s background. They have experience running two national-level tournaments: the 2021 National Deaf Pickleball Tournament in San Diego and the 2022 tournament at The Villages in Florida, where he was responsible for scheduling, bracket setup, and related tasks. Last year and this year, Farley hosted Southern California pickleball tournaments, handling scheduling, logistics, and collaboration with various committee members. With these experiences, we are excited to announce Farley Warshaw as our DPUSA Director of National Tournament.
We look forward to seeing everyone participate in the upcoming tournament under TD Warshaw’s leadership.
We will be sharing more announcements—stay tuned for them!

September 2025

August 2025

Transcript

Hello. I’m Janice Smith Warshaw, DPUSA President. I have a lot of announcements to share.
The DPUSA Board Team will host the General Business Meeting on Thursday, October 9, at
6:30 p.m. in the DoubleTree Hotel’s Ballroom. The hotel is right next to the Bounce Pickleball
facility. It is within walking distance.

I just wanted to let you all know that the NDPT Co-Chairs told me that they worked on the
tournament schedule diligently and realized that the last tournament match will end at 9:45 p.m.
My board team and I discussed and agreed to proceed with the general business meeting at
6:30 p.m. I will share some of my ideas in the following slides. I will explain more to you.
There will be four vacant DPUSA Board positions: President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Social
Media Specialist. Since the tournament will not conclude until 9:45 p.m. on Thursday, some of
you will miss the general business meeting. Supposedly, you want to nominate yourself and
apply for one of the vacant board positions. Please submit your video to Sherry Duhon
at SherryD354@gmail.com before September 1, 2025. Thank you.

As you may recall, we ratified the Bylaws at NPDT in Austin, TX, last year. However, we,
the DPUSA Board team, evaluated the past NDPT tournaments and decided it is time to host
the National Tournament next year in 2026. The current bylaws are not reflected correctly for the
DPUSA-hosted National Tournament. We have to make some revisions that are aligned closely
to the National Tournament, which DPUSA hosts. I will be sending a draft copy of the bylaws to
you all for your review. Please send your feedback to us at dpusabylaws@gmail.com no later
than Friday, August 22. Your input will help us make some adjustments to the bylaws
appropriately. After the changes, I will send out a final draft of the copy to you all again by
September 9th, which will be 30 days before the general business meeting convenes on October
9th. It gives you some time to review the bylaws again. We will be able to review the bylaws
expeditiously and ratify them at the meeting. Thank you.

During the elections of Board positions, there will be some pickleball players who miss this
event. I apologize, but you all will have a chance to watch a video of each candidate.
Unfortunately, some players will miss the nominations on the floor. However, these players still
can vote the bylaws by giving a note to one of DPUSA Board members prior to their game. The
board members will collect the voting note from these players who cannot attend the general
business meeting to vote and support the bylaws revisions.

We, the DPUSA Board, wanted to thank Julia Hong, Social Media Specialist, for designing and
developing a beautiful logo and flyer for the 2026 DPUSA National Tournament. If you want more information about the tournament next year, please see us at the booth during the NDPT-
MD tournament. Thank you.

Today is Friday, August 8th. It is called National Pickleball Day! We, the DPUSA Board, want to
wish you all a wonderful, fun time competing with your peers.

We, the Board Team, appreciate your participation in the tournament(s) and support the DPUSA
organization. We look forward to seeing you all at the NPDT-MD this October.

June 2025

Transcript:

Hello. I’m Janice Smith Warshaw, DPUSA President. We, the board, are very excited to share an announcement!

The DPUSA Board decided on and picked the location for the 2026 DPUSA Tournament. Where will that be? Fresno. It is 3 hours south of Fremont and 5 hours north of Riverside. The place we are hosting the tournament at is Sierra Sports and Racquet Club on October 8 to 11, 2026 (4 days).

The club has a total of 40 pickleball courts. 20 courts are with permanent nets and 20 are with temporary nets with tapes.

The center of the club has a really cool arena with nice bleachers for easy viewing of playoffs and championship rounds where players and fans can gather to watch. The tennis court can be converted to pickleball courts. It is really exciting!

More details will be shared soon.

To wrap up, I would like to share a quote from Henry Ford. “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is a progress; working together is a success.” Now we are involved, working hard together to make DPUSA a success for our future pickleball players.

We look forward to seeing you all there at the National Deaf Pickleball Tournament – Maryland this coming October. We will have a general business meeting on October 9th. We want your participation and your voices as it is important and it helps us make revisions for the better.

Thank you for your continued support.

May 2025

Transcript:

Hello, I am Janice Smith Warshaw, DPUSA President. I wish to share some announcements.
First, as to the DPUSA’s first logo, I want to thank Michael Dubow, our former DPUSA Board member. He worked with another person to develop that first logo. When his term was over, Jeff Lubman took his place on the Board. The board recognized that the paddle in the logo looked more like a tennis racquet than a paddle, so we decided to fill in the paddles with navy blue. Then recently, Jeff came up with the idea of selling caps and towels with the logo. The Board recognized that the adjusted logo was not the best fit for this. Julia Hong, our Social Media Specialist, proposed and designed the new logo to the Board. The Board unanimously agreed this was a better design for our needs. Now if you are curious as to what products we will have for sale, we have three different colors for caps: royal blue, aqua, and white. We agreed with a deaf woman who lives in the Villages and does the embroidery work on all the caps with logos. She suggested to us that the paddles in the current size are not a good fit for the caps. She suggested we keep the balls with the letters, but remove the paddles. The Board members agreed that her suggestion was good. This includes the towels . The towels are in one color: blue. The towels are 16 inches by 29 inches. It includes hooks which you can hang up on the fence. We will sell these soon. Jeff Lubman will be setting up order forms and shipping information then we will send out information as to how you can order these. Very exciting for us!

Our treasurer this past year has been Louis Lapides. Recently, Louis decided to resign. The Board accepted his resignation. I want to thank Louis for his services the last few months, including his time and participation in the monthly board meetings. I really appreciate his involvement. The position has been replaced with Scott Kramer who is happy to serve as the interim treasurer from now until this coming October when we have our general business meeting at the National Deaf Pickleball Tournament. We need to have a formal election to fill the Treasurer position. Thank you to Scott for his willingness to serve as the interim treasurer.

Sherry Duhon, our nomination chair, already sent out a video about the nomination process, timeline, and the four positions that will be vacant this October ( President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Social Media Specialist) . These positions will be filled during the election coming up in October at the National Deaf Pickleball Tournament in Maryland during the general business meeting. If you do not feel ready to nominate yourselves now, you can nominate yourself during the general business meeting in October. We look forward to seeing who will fill those four positions.

Related to the National Deaf Pickleball Tournament in 2026, the tournament was originally planned to take place in Sacramento. When the Board saw that the NDPT-MD has 528 registered players, the Board realized that Sacramento’s facility has only 24 courts. We felt it was not the right place to host the national-level tournament. However, we still want to host the NDPT in California. We are looking for a location that will be able to accommodate 450 to 500 players or even 600 players. We want to make sure all players who register do not get on the waiting list if possible. We want everyone to be able to play more games. Keep an eye out for announcements soon when we know where we will host the 2026 tournament.

Thank you for your ongoing support with DPUSA.

February 2025

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Janice Smith Warshaw, DPUSA President. We recently had a board meeting and I want to share updates. I wish to make some accolades toward the former DPUSA board members. I recognize that not all DPUSA members were at the recent Austin Deaf Pickleball Tournament and not all Board Members could be present due to their personal reasons when I shared accolades at the general meeting in Austin. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work, commitments, and contributions to this organization. We could not succeed without their contributions and support. Let’s give them a round of handwaves! They are: Pat Kinast, Vice President; Nikki Surber, Secretary, Audrey Frank, Treasurer, Erika Thompon, Member at Large 1 (now Social Media Specialist); Michael DuBowe, Member at Large 2 (now called Resource Specialist) and Michael Catron, Member at Large 3 (now called the DPUSA Tournament Director). I recognize these great people who have been involved in this organization and I want to express my gratitude to them again. Hand waves!

The current DPUSA Board members had a discussion and acknowledged that the original DPUSA logo lines on the paddles look like tennis racquets. We decided to keep the logo design as it is except change the paddles to be solid blue.

The current board members finally had the guidelines for hosting a National Deaf Pickleball Tournament completed. We added three new areas. The first two are on page 7. The third which is on page nine …hold on that one and I will discuss further in a moment.

Regarding tournament rule that involves sub players: If a player ends up needing a sub, the sub must have similar DUPR rating level as the player in any of the events.

The second part: DUPR ratings…we did announce at the Austin Tournament that all players are strongly encouraged to register for DUPR ratings. DUPR registration is free. We will accept other ratings such as from USPA, IPPA, Canada’s or private club’s ratings, and so forth. New registrants for DUPR tend to start at “not rated”. You need to participate in different tournaments to build your rating and over time, it will reflect your true rating for tournaments.

For the anti-harassment policy on page 9, DPUSA Board Members want every tournament event to be a safe space place to play. We added a/b/c:
a. No physical, sexual, verbal harassment about age, disability, gender identity, national origin, race, or religion by any person will be tolerated.
b. If a complaint is made or the committee members see an incident, the Tournament Chair and DPUSA President will intervene and assess the situation. If both the DPUSA President and Tournament Chair
agree that the harasser committed a serious offense, they will inform the player or fan that they need to be removed from the tournament site immediately and will re-assess the situation for the next host tournament.

c. The expelled player or fan will not receive a refund.

Our board member Estella Bustamente, Director of Tournaments, will create a video to explain on how to do biddings, what to expect, what to do, and how to plan for submitting a tournament bid this coming Fall/October’s DPUSA Tournament in Finksburg, Maryland.
Thank you for your support for DPUSA!