Meet New USAPA Board Member Stacie Townsend
Stacie Townsend is the USAPA’s new Board Member at Large for Business Development. That means, in Stacie’s own words, her goal is “to improve the top line revenue for the USAPA to facilitate the organization’s mission of promoting the growth and development of pickleball in the United States.” To do so, Stacie will leverage her past experience as a business attorney and entrepreneur in South Florida, where she works primarily with technology, emerging, and entrepreneurial companies. She will also leverage her extensive background in the sports world as a softball player, where she had an illustrious career at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and with the Great Britain National Softball Team, which culminated in her being named to the All World Softball Team in 2012 and inducted to both the UTEP Athletics Hall of Fame and the British Softball Federation Hall of Fame. Most recently, Stacie was also the assistant coach for the France Softball Team as they made a run to qualify for the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games.
Stacie has a keen eye on how to grow the sport and she, like most other pickleball players around the country, has already seen dramatic growth of the sport of pickleball across the country. Stacie attributes this to a few determining factors, which include “the culture and community around pickleball–it has the best people–the small learning curve to learn the game, and the USAPA’s amazing ambassador network that works to grow the sport every day across the country.” Stacie also has noticed more large, mainstream companies gaining interest in our sport. Stacie stated that “the goal is to garner even more corporate interest, and as our participatory numbers increase, we should be able to attract more prominent companies and other sponsors.”
A regular pickleball player for the last two years, Stacie will usually hit the courts at the Delray Beach Tennis Center and at other local parks in and around Palm Beach County, Florida. If you see Stacie on the pickleball courts, be sure to stop by and say hello!
