Florida Pickler Using Game to Feed Hungry Children

By Stephen Hunt
Red Line Editorial

 

When Rick Meyer and his wife moved to Florida 15 years ago, he wanted to make a positive impact in his new state. After meeting Carrie Torres, the executive director and founder of Provision Packs, a community-based initiative aimed at helping alleviate child hunger, he adopted feeding hungry children as his cause.

“I wanted to connect some type of athletic event with feeding kids,” Meyer, 75, said. “The first year, I took up boxing, raised a bunch of money.”

Then he got knocked out, and his wife made him give it up.

“So, I took up powerlifting,” Meyer continued. “We ended up going to the nationals, and I did a fundraiser based on (people) sponsoring me at x number of dollars per pound.”

The effort also “raised a whole bunch of money,” he said, and he continued to raise money through other sporting endeavors. Now that includes pickleball.

About a year and a half ago, Meyer started playing pickleball after being introduced to it at Pictona Pickleball, a 49-court facility in Holly Hill, Florida, a short drive from his home in Palm Coast. Despite never picking up a paddle, he quickly learned the sport and how he could utilize it to raise money for hungry children.

“I came off the court the first time and immediately entered a tournament,” Meyer said. “In two months, I’ve got a deadline (with my first tournament).”

A skilled tennis player while in college, Meyer picked up the basics of pickleball quickly. As in tennis, he focuses on singles.

“Singles is like tennis,” he said. “The best strategy is to hit it hard to the backhand and rush the net. … So learning singles pickleball, especially strategy-wise, was pretty easy.”

Meyer played eight tournaments in 2023 and fared well, inspiring him to play in the March 2024 Golden Ticket event in Miami at the Miami Beach Convention Center. He won gold in men’s singles 3.5 age 75+ bracket to punch his ticket to the 2024 BioFreeze USA Pickleball National Championships at Arizona Athletic Grounds in Mesa, Arizona, from Nov. 9-17, 2024.

In April, he played in the 2024 Minto US Open Pickleball Championships in Naples, Florida, and was quite impressed with the atmosphere at that festive event. That got him excited for nationals, where he anticipates a similar vibe.

In a competitive division in Mesa, Meyer anticipates being just behind the top group of players.

“But I live in Florida, and I’ve been training in this heat down here,” he said. “I feel I have a conditioning advantage over a group that will be playing from 75-79-years-old. We’ll see how that plays out.”

Since playing in those two events, he’s found other ways to raise funds for Provision Packs, which now feeds 1,000 children weekly. After repping Selkirk equipment at previous tournaments on social media, the company sent him five of its best paddles, which he then auctioned off, raising $3,000 to feed Florida children.

Meyer also recently hosted a local tournament with the proceeds going to Provision Packs.

“I figured if I got 50 people, that would be good,” he said. “We had to turn away people. We ended up with 82. Told them before we started, ‘We’re here to play pickleball, but what we’re really here for is to feed kids.’

“Eight dollars feeds a kid for an entire weekend. We’ve got a school, Wadsworth Elementary School, so if we can raise $2,000, that’ll feed 65 kids, the number we feed there every week, for one month. That should be our goal today.”

After his spiel, his fellow picklers realized the seriousness of child hunger in Florida and that Provision Packs offers a viable solution. Meyer remembers receiving a steady stream of donations, in cash and checks, throughout that afternoon.

The key, he said, is identifying the problem and then being able to show the picklers a solution.

“That combination is good,” he said.

Before retiring and moving to Florida, Meyer worked in sales and marketing for Monroe Shocks & Struts, a company started by his grandfather, August F. Meyer, in 1916.

And even though he’s only been a pickler for less than two years, he immediately noticed something special and unique about his new sport.

“It is a community,” Meyer said. “Playing in nationals, that gets somebody’s attention. I start out every fundraising meeting (asking), has anybody heard of pickleball? Of course, everybody raises their hands.

“How many of you have played? Half raise their hands. How many of you want to play? The other half. You get their attention and go through our program. It (pickleball and feeding kids) is a good marriage.”

For additional information, visit www.provisionpacks.org.

Stephen Hunt is an accomplished freelance writer and sports statistician who has been blessed to cover a multitude of subjects and sports in his time. He is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.