Dinking on Deck: The Cruise Industry is Riding The Pickleball Wave

Todd ‘Happy’ Boynton is from a tiny town in Western Massachusetts, and for many years, his life was anything but happy - a tumultuous marriage, battles with addiction, and a body worn down by years of physical labor and ice hockey injuries. 

“Happy was an ironic nickname,” he says. “Like, ‘boy, you're miserable all the time.’ ‘Hey, I'm happy.’ So it stuck.”

Five years ago, during a trip to Disney World, Boynton weighed 350 pounds, sported a Dasani water bottle filled with vodka, and required a wheelchair to get around. He recalled telling his wife that he wanted to end his life. “And after all the years of doing that to her,” he recalls, “she cried.” At that moment, Happy chose sobriety. 

Pickleball came into his life shortly after.  

"The first time I hit the ball,” he says, “I had flashbacks to playing goalie. I get a visceral feeling. I feel it in my bones.”

“Do you remember the machines that would sell super balls at the grocery store? You could put a dime in, and you'd get this little rubber ball. When we were 8 years old, we would get those balls and I would just throw them against the wall and try to stop them. Well, that's where being a goalie came from. I loved stopping the puck. I loved stopping the ball, and I get that same visceral feeling from pickleball.”

Happy’s passion for the sport is infectious and he enlists anyone who will listen. "I love talking pickleball. I get kicked out of parties for it. My wife won't hang out with me some nights when I'm on a pickleball rant. But all I need is one person to be interested and I'll keep going because I know what good it can do for everybody.” 

From organizing tournaments to advocating for more courts in his community, Happy’s on a mission to spread the joys of pickleball far and wide. "My goal is to become the Johnny Appleseed of pickleball. I just want there to be pickleball courts everywhere, where you don't have to make a reservation, you don't have to buy anything. You just say, ‘hey, what is this?’ I put a paddle in your hand and you hit the ball and you go, ‘this is pretty cool.’ Bang! Done.”

Despite his own aversion to keeping score, he recognizes the value of DUPR in creating a standardized metric that transcends geographical boundaries. “Everybody should have a DUPR. So once we have 8 billion people with DUPR scores, you'll know who to play with. You could go to India, you could go to Bangladesh and say, ‘where's the 3.0s?”

Happy still struggles with his weight, but he’s down 75 pounds.

“I‘d like to say pickleball helped me lose weight. Eating better helped me lose weight. But wanting to live makes you eat better, which helps you lose weight, which helps you play pickleball, which makes you want to live.”

His story serves as a reminder that happiness isn't just a destination—it's about embracing life day by day, game by game.

“I am happy all the time. You either choose to be happy or you choose to be miserable. It's a choice.”

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DUPR, the world's most accurate global pickleball rating system and My Pickleball Coach, the premier pickleball coaching platform for coaches and players, today announced the launch of a “Global Skills Program”, a co-branded initiative to support coaches and players in their pickleball careers and journeys and further unify the sport under a common language and standard. 

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The new Global Skills Program, created by experts from DUPR and My Pickleball Coach, makes it easy for coaches to get players rated on DUPR, and offers in-app coaching for players to improve their skills and level. The program, available on My Pickleball Coach, seamlessly integrates cameras, the DUPR app, and the My Pickleball Coach app, enabling coaches to initiate scalable coaching experiences for thousands of players, generate DUPR ratings, and foster new revenue streams and expansion for coaches and clubs.

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Tito Machado, CEO of DUPR remarked, “We developed the Global Skills Program in partnership with My Pickleball Coach to offer coaches scalable technology to support their efforts to grow and develop the game in their communities. When players are rated on DUPR and have opportunities to develop their skills, everyone in the global pickleball ecosystem benefits, from facilities, clubs, equipment manufacturers, travel companies and everyone who touches the game.”

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Jordan Briones, one of the leading pickleball coaches with over 65,000 subscribers on YouTube, emphasized, “With 13 million active players and another 17 million beginners joining the game, the key to sustaining pickleball's growth lies in growing and measuring skills for players. By becoming a DUPR Coach, the Global Skills Program equips coaches like me with a simple way to help players get a DUPR, reach their potential and establish a love for the game. When players have a rating and goals to achieve, players play more, join clubs, influence their friends and family to play and contribute to the growth of the sport.”

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“The Global Skills Program supports coaches in driving more pickleball activity in their communities by offering a seamless technology solution to initiate DUPR ratings for players and pathways to improve their skills,” remarked Katie Nimitz, President of MyJourney. “Players simply play a game of pickleball where a phone camera or installed camera at the facility records their play. Coaches then use My Pickleball Coach to rapidly evaluate and assess a series of on-paddle and off-paddle skills to personally score key game areas such as technical skills, shot selection, partner chemistry, and court positioning. This automatically then creates the provisional rating and DUPR account for the player with their detailed assessment and DUPR skills rating.”

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The Global Skills Program offers two main components: The DUPR Coach for coaches and the DUPR Skills Subscription for players. The DUPR Coach enables coaches to initiate DUPR ratings for new pickleball players with a skill-based assessment technology. Once trained, coaches can view videos of players and produce provisional DUPRs for players. The DUPR Skills Subscription enables players to receive coaching via the My Pickleball Coach app to improve their DUPR rating. Players can set a level-based goal, i.e. moving from a 3.5 DUPR to a 4.0 DUPR, and access DUPR-specific coaching from Martina Kochli, John Cincola, Jordan Briones, Zane Navratil and Collin Johns, among other DUPR Coaches, via the My Pickleball Coach App.

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Coaches interested in becoming a DUPR Coach can click here. 

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Players looking to improve their DUPR skills can activate the DUPR Skills Subscription by downloading the My Pickleball Coach app here.

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About My Pickleball Coach 

My Pickleball Coach was developed by the world's top players and coaches like CEO Martina Kochli, John Cincola, Zane Navratil, Jordan Briones and Collin Johns to create a highly scalable way for coaches to grow the sport of pickleball. My Pickleball Coach is developed by MyJourney and is the inventor of Coaching-as-a-Service technology enabling a single coach to coach thousands of players.

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‍For the 2024 season, NPL Will Adopt DUPR as Official Rating and Support Efforts to Enhance the League With Level-Based Play, More Opportunities to Compete and Grow Participation 

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The National Pickleball League® (NPL) www.nplpickleball.com is pleased to announce it has entered into a partnership with DUPR, (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating) to develop the league and further enhance the competitive experience for players.  

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DUPR offers organizers the ability to use its accurate, reliable rating to organize competitive, level-based matches, and use its community platform to reach hundreds of thousands of pickleball players to highlight their leagues and upcoming events. Most importantly, players  benefit from competing against others at their level for an even better experience.

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“DUPR is the most accurate and reliable pickleball rating, and its team prioritizes collaboration and partnership to grow the game together. We are excited to bring DUPR’s rating and technology to our league, provide an even better experience for our players and partners, and showcase NPL to DUPR’s large community of pickleball players to bring more competitors into the league,” said Paul Bamundo, Chief Executive Officer of the National Pickleball League®. “Integrating DUPR also benefits our players beyond league play. DUPR provides connectivity to the entire global pickleball community, uniting all players across a common rating and standard. Now, our participants have the ability to know their level, find more opportunities to play wherever they are, and be a part of the global pickleball community.”

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“We are honored to have the opportunity to collaborate with the National Pickleball League® and support their exciting formats for professional players ages 50 and up,” said Tito Machado, DUPR CEO. “NPL has built a dynamic and exciting professional league that showcases talented athletes and reminds everyone that age shouldn’t be a barrier. These players are the heart of the game and we hope that our rating and technology platform will help to make the experience even better, and offer more connections and opportunities to players to participate and achieve at the highest levels in pickleball.”

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All results from NPL will be submitted to count for a player’s rating. Players can also follow the NPL league page on DUPR for updates on competition, scheduling and league standings. 

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The 2024 season will consist of 12 teams representing cities from across the country. Each team will have a roster of 14-16 players, equally split between women and men, with more than 200 pickleball professionals playing in the NPL this season. 

The 2024 regular season kicks into high gear with competition event weekends taking place once per month beginning May 17-19 in Chicago, with $150,000 in prize money on the line, culminating in the season-ending Championships in October. The season opener will be livestreamed on the National Pickleball League® YouTube Channel @nationalpickleballleague with additional coverage of NPL events on CBS Sports this season. 

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National Pickleball League® is among the many leagues worldwide adopting DUPR to enhance the experience for its players, and to support the growth and global unification of the game,  joining Honcho Pickleball League, National Team Pickleball League (NTPL), World Pickleball Tour (WPT) and La Cocina, and others. DUPR’s solution provides organizers with the ability to showcase their events to the most active and engaged community in pickleball, and enables players to find more opportunities to play at their level wherever they are. The platform is built on DUPR’s industry-leading rating, which looks at match results to provide an accurate, reliable evaluation of a players skill level across age, gender and location. 

About National Pickleball League®

The National Pickleball League® was founded in 2022 by Champions Pro players Rick Witsken, Beth Bellamy, and Michael “Hammer Mike” Chen. NPL Pickleball™ is a nationwide team competition for Champions Division (age 50+) professional pickleball players and made up of twelve teams in metropolitan locations in Indianapolis, Austin, Boca Raton, Naples, Denver, Oklahoma City, Houston, Seattle, Kansas City, Columbus, Coachella Valley and Princeton. National Pickleball League® is owned by National Pickleball League, LLC. The NPL is dedicated to expanding the reach of pickleball, fostering community engagement, physical and mental health, and elevating the sport to new heights. Companies interested in sponsorship opportunities with NPL Pickleball™ can email info@nplpickleball.com for more information or visit the league’s website at www.NPLpickleball.com.

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For more information and to sign up for DUPR’s free platform, visit www.dupr.com. 

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