On a hilltop overlooking Casper Mountain, in a cavernous former maintenance building that once housed big trucks for an energy-services company, some of the best amateur pickleball players in the West will gather over Labor Day weekend to chase a title that could carry them all the way to Texas. The 2026 Powerball Wyoming Amateur Pickleball Championships, part of the nationwide Powerball Pickleball State Championship Series powered by the Carvana PPA Tour, runs Saturday, Sept. 5 through Monday, Sept. 7 at the Casper Pickleball & Sports Complex at 1911 Dunlap Way. The tournament is open to anyone who wants to watch the fastest-growing sport in America unfold on eight indoor courts.
The event is one stop in an audacious national experiment: a series of amateur tournaments staged in all 50 states, each one a qualifying path to the year-end Pickleball World Championships in Dallas, Texas. Gold medalists earn the title of state champion and free registration to the worlds, with entry into the Champions Division, where medalists from every state battle for national supremacy. Silver and bronze finishers receive discounted registration to the big event. For a state like Wyoming, with one of the smallest populations in the country, the stakes feel especially meaningful.
The three-day format spreads the action across the weekend. Saturday features Women's Doubles and Men's Singles; Sunday is devoted to Mixed Doubles; and Monday closes with Men's Doubles and Women's Singles. Players compete in skill levels from 3.0 to 5.0 and age groups from 18-and-under through 70-plus, with matches played in a round-robin format followed by playoffs. More than 100 players had registered for the Wyoming event. The tournament is operated by Pickleball Is Great, and players are rated using the DUPR system.
That the event is held indoors in Wyoming at all is something of a small miracle, and it is a story rooted in the unlikely partnership that built the venue itself. The Casper Pickleball & Sports Complex opened in December 2023 as the city's first indoor facility with dedicated pickleball courts, the result of a chance meeting between two enthusiasts. Dia, a local resident and a USA Pickleball district and state ambassador who had spent years teaching the game and running leagues and tournaments, had his name on a poster at the Casper Recreation Center. Todd Moore, a real estate and hospitality entrepreneur from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, saw it and called out of the blue to ask if Dia wanted to talk about building a pickleball facility.
"The project was not feasible without him," Moore said of Dia. The two bought the former Packers Plus Energy Services building in July 2023 and began a rapid renovation, converting the 45,000-square-foot structure into a complex with eight pickleball courts, eight indoor batting cages, locker rooms, a retail shop and event space. Five of the courts are regulation size and three are championship size, with extra room around the perimeter for bleachers during tournaments. All eight are surfaced with the same material used at the U.S. Open tennis championships, painted with 18 coats of specially designed paint mixed with recycled rubber. The facility also offers clinics and private lessons for players ages 8 and up.
"The growth of the sport in the last few years has been exponential," Moore said at the time. "It's a sport that you don't have to be an Olympic athlete to learn and enjoy on the court. It's a very social sport."
That social, welcoming character is central to the sport's astonishing rise. For the players who step onto the courts at 1911 Dunlap Way this Labor Day weekend, the immediate prize is a state title and a ticket to the biggest stage the sport has to offer. For the community watching from the bleachers, it is a chance to see why a game that has become a national phenomenon found a permanent home in a small Wyoming city.