Siouxland Pickleball Association Hosts Men's Doubles Charity Tournament in Nebraska

Twenty doubles teams walked into First Serve Tennis Center on April 4 and walked out having raised more than $3,800 for the Siouxland Soup Kitchen. That's the math behind the Siouxland Pickleball Association's second annual men's doubles charity tournament in South Sioux City, Nebraska, and it's worth paying close attention to if you run retreats or organize local club events.

Event organizer Cheri Van Valkingburg put it plainly: "Everybody's out here having fun, no one's winning any money, they're just here to support the soup kitchen and we just love doing it." That tone, competitive but unambiguously purpose-driven, defined how 40 players moved through the bracket on Saturday.

The SPA selected the Siouxland Soup Kitchen as this year's beneficiary with intention. Organizers pointed to the kitchen's daily reach as the deciding factor: it serves 150 to 200 meals every single day to residents across the Sioux City area. At a moment when the soup kitchen hit its highest-ever monthly numbers in September 2025, the timing wasn't incidental.

First Serve Tennis Center, which runs 12 indoor courts at 1500 Riverview Drive, gave the association enough capacity to move a 20-team men's doubles draw without jamming schedules. That's the kind of venue specification worth logging: for a tournament this size, you need eight to ten dedicated courts rotating on tight match windows to keep a double-elimination bracket clean and on time.

This was year two for the format, and that repetition matters. The first year establishes the template. The second year is when associations start refining bracket software, tightening volunteer roles, and building the sponsor relationship that converts entry fees into something bigger than a trophy. The SPA, which grew from 50 members at its 2020 founding to 500 today, has the network to make a commitment like this land.

For retreat organizers looking to replicate this model, the draw structure that works at this scale is a round-robin pool format feeding into a single-elimination bracket, capped at 20 to 24 teams. Entry fees go directly to the charity; local business sponsorships cover court costs and operational overhead. Sponsor packages at this level typically include logo placement on tournament graphics, product demo tables courtside, and acknowledgment during bracket announcements. A handful of local retailers covering the facility rental frees every dollar of the entry fee for the cause itself.

The Siouxland Soup Kitchen's $3,800 came from 40 players on one Saturday morning. Run the same format across a full retreat weekend with 60 to 80 players in mixed brackets, and the fundraising impact scales considerably faster than the logistical lift.