Holston Habitat pickleball tournament returns, expands fundraising across three cities

Holston Habitat for Humanity is bringing back Rally for Roofs, and the size of the event tells the story. The second annual pickleball tournament will run May 7-9, 2026, with matches spread across Kingsport, Johnson City and Elizabethton, turning a local fundraiser into a regional weekend that reaches deep into the Tri-Cities.

Presented with Eastman Recreation, the tournament is built around a formula that has made pickleball unusually effective for small-market nonprofits. It is open to players of all skill levels, which widens the field well beyond the core club crowd. It also blends competition with a social setting, a combination that helps fill brackets, attract spectators and keep people coming back year after year. For an organization like Holston Habitat, that matters as much as any single donation.

The return visit is the clearest sign that the first year worked. The inaugural Rally for Roofs ran May 29 to June 1, 2025, and WJHL reported that more than 250 people participated. That kind of turnout gives a nonprofit something rare: proof that the event can scale, repeat and keep generating attention without needing a complete reinvention every season. In a region where many charity events compete for the same limited calendar space, pickleball offers a format that can be staged across multiple venues and still feel accessible.

Laura Kelly, Holston Habitat’s executive director, said the goal was to raise funds the organization could give back to the community. That mission fits the event well. Habitat’s work depends on local visibility, volunteer energy and donor confidence, and a pickleball tournament delivers all three at once. Players, sponsors and supporters can show up for an active weekend while also backing affordable housing and homebuilding in the Tri-Cities.

Holston Habitat also folded Rally for Roofs into its 40th-anniversary year of projects and events in 2025, which underscores how quickly the tournament became part of the organization’s public identity. What started as a new fundraiser now reads like a durable piece of the civic calendar, with the sport’s low barrier to entry and broad appeal giving the cause a format that is easy to repeat and hard to ignore.