Eight years of pickleball & fellowship
The LPA began in early 2017. Interest at the Rec Center was growing, and Laramie was hosting the 2017 Wyoming Senior Olympics with pickleball as a scheduled event. From a handful of beginners to 80+ members today, here’s the story.
“It was a total hoot.”
Amber joined the very first first-timers clinic at the Rec Center in January 2017: eight people, a round-robin, and clinic instructor Kason Walton leading warm-up drills before the friendly competition began.
Pickleball, she learned, has nothing to do with pickles. It combines table tennis, badminton and tennis; the gear is simple: a net, a paddle, and a hard plastic whiffle ball. The space in front of the net is, oddly, called “the kitchen.”
Per then-VP Lowell Spackman, the sport debuted in Laramie about a year earlier; with more rec-center playing times, there were soon more than 40 regulars. “We laughed and joked amidst a bit of competitive zeal,” Amber wrote, “now I think I’m ready to play with the big kids.”
Past officers
Lowell Spackman, VP
Dennis Tangeman, Sec.
Georgia Carmin, Treas.
Michael Day, VP
Kirsten Reynolds, Sec.
Gail Stakes, Treas.
Dennis Tangeman, VP
Carolyn Welsh, Sec.
Treece Sisneros, Treas.
Leslie Polson, VP
Eric Sandberg, Sec.
Steve Anderson, Treas.
Cheryl Graybill, VP
Ariane Eicke, Sec.
Natasha Snelson, Treas.