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!
