Dinking and Driving Across America
May 22, 2025
(An amazing woman had a goal of playing at least one pickleball match in all 50 states. We first profiled Lorraine Rupper for an article that ran in Pickleball Magazine last summer and one that appeared here last fall. We caught up with Lorraine this week.)
She played pickleball on an ice rink in Alaska and a wooden church floor in Hawaii. She dinked in Delaware, lobbed in Louisiana, sliced in South Dakota.
She was shocked in South Carolina, scared in Maryland, mad in Maine and got pulled over in Wyoming.
Life is an adventure. Playing at least one pickleball game in all 50 states was the adventure of a lifetime for Lorraine Rupper.
Giving it a shot topped her bucket list for years.
“The pickleball community is a welcoming one and I wanted to meet people who loved pickleball as much as I do,” Lorraine said.
She drove alone to 45 states. In 19 days last June, she played at least one game in 36 states. That is not a typo. Thirty-six states in 19 days. She put over 8000 miles on her 2014 Honda Civic. She estimates the trip cost her at least $3000.
Lorraine started playing pickleball in 2014 at her local rec center in Orem, Utah. She went there to go jogging. “I love sweets, but also like to stay thin, so I exercise. I heard noise coming from the gym and I said, ‘What’s this?’ A lady said, ‘It’s pickleball, wanna play?’”
She played. She was immediately addicted.
Ten years later, Lorraine has a 5.0 DUPR and 200 medals and trophies from 250 tournaments.
The thought of playing at least one game in every state was on Lorraine’s mind since 2016, after meeting a couple who accomplished the feat, but they had an RV. Since then, her motto could have been “Have paddle, will travel,” because she brought it with her on family vacations, knocking out a few western states before the epic journey in June.
She estimates that on her trip across America she played 150 games and lost a grand total of…one.
“I’m very competitive,” she wrote in an email. “In fact, I know I need to tone it down a bit.”
Her husband, Ron, a 3.5 player, accompanied her to only four states. “He would be bored out of his mind because he doesn’t really play pickleball that much,” she said. Besides, Ron had been to many states when he worked as a truck driver. Their son, Devin, 25, is a 5.0 and went with her only to Nevada. “I did get lonely,” she said. “I listened to a lot of murder mystery books along the way.”
Lorraine turns 60 in August and has lived in the same house in Orem for 33 years, the same number of years she and Ron have been married. They have three children. She’s a former math teacher turned middle school guidance counselor and traveled the country on an educator’s salary. No five star hotels (or even three or four stars) or fancy restaurants were on her itinerary. She ate a lot of fast food and stayed at some motels she calls “sketchy.”
There were frightening moments. While walking alone late at night in a dark motel hallway in Maryland, she thought she was being followed by a man. She saw another guy, engaged him in some disingenuous conversation, and the apparent follower split. Large spider webs hung from the ceilings of a couple of motel hallways, including one web she had to knock down to get into her room.
There were frustrating moments. She claims a private pickleball club in Maine denied her request to play just one game because she’s not a member.
Her phone battery died twice so without GPS she took the long route to some destinations. She got pulled over for speeding while driving in heavy rain in Wyoming. “I was super happy when he let me off with a warning. I’m sure it looked like I was living out of my car,” she said with a laugh.
There were surprising moments. She met a couple in their 50’s in Pineville, West Virginia (population: 619) who had never heard of pickleball. She wasn’t sure if she was in West Virginia or an episode of The Twilight Zone and a time machine had sent her back to 1960.
But the pull of pickleball even came into play in Pineville. The husband who never heard of the sport agreed to let Lorraine give him a lesson. The guy loved it. “His enthusiasm was contagious and I could see that he couldn’t wait to play again,” Lorraine said. She gave the man and his wife a couple of paddles and pickleballs. “Maybe I can plant a seed in this small town and hopefully pickleball can grow there,” she said.
There were emotional moments. She reconnected with a sister in Nebraska from whom she was estranged for 20 years. “That made my heart happy,” she said. For the first time she visited her brother and sister-in-law’s home in Pennsylvania and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
“I wanted to spread the love of pickleball to [people in] places that might not have heard of or played pickleball before,” Lorraine said. “My trip was more of a whirlwind and I know I didn't see the best parts of many of the states, but I had a wonderful trip and met so many great people along the way.”
To say that Lorraine had a hardscrabble upbringing would be an understatement. The third oldest of 10 children, her parents divorced when she was seven and she lived in foster homes from age 12 to 17, when she was adopted. Her biological and foster families moved every year before she graduated from high school. Eighteen moves in 18 years.
“My upbringing had a lot to do with how I am today,” Lorraine said. “I have had to fight for everything I have. I was a pretty feisty kid.”
Sports became her refuge.
At Pahrump Valley High School in Nevada, Lorraine played tennis, volleyball, basketball, softball and ran track. She was the school’s Female Athlete of the Year. She made time to study: She was her class co-Valedictorian.
Her last name rhymes with “super.”
“So much was out of my control when I was young. I like to set and reach goals,” Lorraine said.
Jackie Nelson met Lorraine at work 40 years ago and is her best friend. “She’s amazing,” Jackie said by phone from her home in Idaho Falls, Idaho. “Lorraine is a survivor. She has overcome so much from her childhood. To stay focused and raise her kids to be education driven, she is just an amazing person.”
During her trip across America, Lorraine wanted to mix in with local residents at every stop, many of which were new to her. “I had never traveled to the south except a few airports and wanted to visit there.” She said the “Pickleheads” app and a Google spreadsheet sent from a pickleball player she met in Facebook’s “Pickleball Forum” group were “invaluable” tools for finding places to play.
She called Opelika, Alabama “One of the best and most welcoming places. They invited me to their once-a-month picnic. And their pickleball facility was huge.”
While playing in Greenville, South Carolina, in June she ran into a woman who was her doubles partner in a tournament in Colorado two years earlier. “Seeing her again [thousands of miles away] was the most fun. We hugged and laughed.”
Lorraine wanted to visit some eastern states she hadn’t been to before. “It was such a delight to meet people in New Jersey and I loved their accents, too,” she said.
“If I was going to rank friendliness, I would say, #1 Opelika, Alabama, #2 Slidell, Louisiana, and #3 Providence, Rhode Island. I would love to go back to all three places, maybe when it's a bit cooler, though.”
Weather was occasionally a problem. “There was the heat in Kansas City, Kansas. I played too long there and experienced heat rash for the first time.”
Lorraine loved that she played pickleball with and against people of all nationalities and ages, from 13-year-olds to eighty-year-olds.
On June 25th, 2024, at 9:03 a.m., Lorraine finished a doubles game at Brunsdale Park in Fargo, North Dakota. It was the 50th state in which she had played at least one match.
“My first thought was, ‘Wow! I did it! Let’s party!’ There was a feeling of elation, and to have a goal like that accomplished. [I thought to myself] ‘Yes!’ I was so happy to finish, and in some ways, I was like, ‘Did I really get all of them?’ and ‘I'm exhausted, I'm going home.‘“
First, she played six more games.
“I realized it was a lot more fun to drive 15 minutes and play for three hours rather than drive three hours and play for 15 minutes,” she said.
She took a lot of photos and met many pickleball players she plans to keep in touch with. “It’s a trip I will never forget! I can't wait until I can go back and visit the people that I met for the first time at the courts. It's an awesome game.”
Her goal accomplished, elation wasn’t her only emotion. “There was also a sense of loss, kind of like when your last child leaves home. What do I do next? “
All she did next was go with her husband in July from Orem to Bainbridge Island, Washington, where, as pickleball aficionados know, the sport was invented in 1965. On the way they stopped in Idaho and Oregon to visit family and friends.
After the end of a whirlwind two months, during a life and a trip full of rough roads, that was a comparatively easy round trip.
Only 2427 miles.
Lorraine told me this week that she is doing well and still plays pickleball three or four times a week. Her eye problems “seem to be getting better,” she said. But she added, “I feel like I have kind of hit a plateau as fears as my pickleball playing goes. I feel like I’m a 5.0, but am probably slightly lower that that now. But I also realize that 99% of the people I play with are younger than me.”
She plays with many bangers. “I mostly like playing with them because I can still mostly beat them by letting them hit the ball out. It does drive me crazy when playing with a banger as my partner, because then I usually get the ball slammed on me.
“Having the skills to dink is always an advantage,” she says.
In an email, Lorraine wrote, “When I tell people I have played in all 50 states, usually they say, "Really, Alaska and Hawaii, too?" Yep. Then they ask, where did you play in .... (whatever state they are more familiar with). I generally have to consult my US Pickleball Picture Map and then I can tell them. Sometimes I shock myself to know that I have traveled to EVERY state!!!”
Thoughts of the week, not all pickleball
· RIP George Wendt. The actor best known for playing the role of Norm on the sitcom classic, Cheers, died Tuesday. He was 76. No cause was specified but he reportedly weighed 350 pounds and had kidney problems. The Chicago native earned six consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations for his role as the beer-guzzling barfly on Cheers, and appeared in every episode of the show during its 11-year run on NBC, beginning in 1982.
· All things being equal I prefer playing pickleball outside. But since it’s been hot and windy in southern Arizona, I joined an indoor pickleball club and have gotten to like playing there. It’s nice not having to deal with courts lined for other sports. The young staff sometimes has the volume on the piped-in music too loud for my taste, but maybe the young players like that.
· I know football season is four months away but are the Dallas Cowboys still “America’s Team?” They haven’t been to a conference championship game since 1996.
· Five years ago this week I checked-off maybe the top item on my top bucket list, really a dream of mine, when my book was published. I never wrote Confessions of an Investigative Reporter to make money or have a bestseller, and I was surprised when it sold so well and was number one in the “Biographies of Journalists” category on Amazon for a while. Thanks so much to all the readers for the kind words.
· I saw a poem on Facebook this week that I thought is worth sharing here. It was written by Gemma Agustines, a pickleball player from Loma Linda, California.
PICKLEBALL IS LIFE
A poem by me comparing pickleball and life:
We serve with hope and dink with grace
We hit the shot with speed and pace
The cat and mouse, I go, you stay
And still the net giveth and taketh away.
You plan the shot, it hits the tape
The best laid plans end in mistake
But still you play, adjust, reset
Life’s not a game with no regret
Avoid the kitchen only when you should
And take the risks when it is good
Win or lose, still be a good sport
It’s always a win when you’re on the court
Don’t just show up, but drill and train
An hour or two will help you gain
So just paddle through the highs and lows
Was it in, was it out? Only pickle gods know
Some days you’re sharp, you rule the court
Around the post, don’t volley short
Yet partner you must, with foe or friend
It’s not just the score, it’s more how you end
The End
· That is excellent, Gemma. Thank you for letting me share it.
Remember, if you buy any Hudef paddle that costs $169.99, use my discount code MS30 to knock down the price by 30%, to $119.99. Any less expensive paddle, the code is MS15, giving you 15% off.