Best of CASE District V Award
 

Institution: Miami University

Title of entry: Dink, Drop, & Laugh

About this entry: Pickleball is not your grandfather's sport or at least not exclusively. It's wildly popular on college campuses and growing so fast that it might become a varsity sport soon. Yet, people still believe it's an activity mostly for retirees. My goal was to show readers that college students are part of the largest age bracket of players, 18-34, while also highlighting our alums who are quite active in its growth, such as "The Voice of Pickleball," Dave Fleming, and Tim Klitch, chief fun officer of the Pickle Ranch in Austin.

I called on our alumni picklers to explain the game's nuances and talk about its future.

The Did you know? nuggets share fun facts and … em … "maybe" facts. After all, no one knows how the name came about. Some credit crewing, others repeat the story about a neighbor's dog, named Pickles, who supposedly interrupted one of the first games by running away with the ball.

The impact is that the fun and informative piece generated numerous phone calls and letters to the editor, including two that pointed out the founder of The Dink (thedinkpickleball.com), a website which I cited, is also an alum. I should have guessed. When it comes to pickleball, our alums own the court.