September 2025 Athlete of the Month

By Del Moon, NSGA Storyteller

Diane Stelpflug, 65
New Berlin, Wisconsin

Diane Stelpflug at the 2025 National Senior Games presented by Humana.

Watching Diane Stelpflug enter the Iowa Events Center for Pickleball at the National Senior Games with a pronounced limp, one might easily assume she was a spectator toting gear for a friend. But a remarkable transformation takes place when Diane steps onto the court, willing her body to follow commands and compensate for her leg weakness to play and compete.

An accident eight years ago altered Diane’s life. “It was on Christmas Eve. I fell on a big puddle of water on a really hard porcelain floor. Think Wile E. Coyote, that’s the kind of fall it was,” she jokes. “I rolled my foot and twisted my knee further than any human being should, and then landed hard on my hip.”

Three years of treatment and therapy followed, and her ACL was removed during one procedure. “So my nerves don’t communicate to my glutes or my hamstring and my left leg,” the 65-year-old retired restaurant operations executive explains. “It was a several-year process just trying to get it diagnosed, and unfortunately, they figured out what’s wrong but never found what to do to fix it.”

Diane ran some track in high school and kept up her fitness with activities like hiking, camping and running. She also joined her husband, Mark, in co-ed volleyball for several years. She even challenged herself to do a marathon at age 50 and achieved the goal in less than a year.

But now, the winged bird was at the critical point where she could give in to the injury and sit, or resolve herself to find ways to do as much as she could.

Diane (left) and her pickleball partner, Terry Stefaniak.

Being a self-described driven optimist, Diane kept her options open and accepted an invitation to try pickleball with a friend three years ago. She fell in love with the sport and took some lessons, finding she could manage doubles play on the court. In rapid time she improved her game and qualified to dink the ball with her partner, Terry Stefaniak, at the 2025 National Senior Games presented by Humana. While the podium eluded them, Diane was thrilled to go on from Iowa to win silver and gold at the Wisconsin Masters Games last month.

Facing the Challenge with Positivity and Hard Work

It’s one thing to be able to recover enough to play a game. It’s another to play at a competitive level. Diane says while she’s not an elite athlete, she is highly motivated and worked hard to train her body. Her goal is to be rated 4.0 or higher and says some days she plays well enough for a high rating.

“I do about an hour of physical therapy every day with pickleball-like moves, sideways, backwards, squats. I really keep doing it because I hope the nerves could regenerate and I’m trying to keep my muscles strong,” she says. “My goal when I get on a pickleball court is that people don’t notice it, except maybe when I’m walking on or walking off. The people that really know me notice it when I’m going to get to a lob or on a really short shot if I’m on the back baseline.”

Diane’s smiles and interactions with others reveals she loves people and the social aspect of pickleball culture. She volunteers as a pickleball ambassador at her recreation center and at a local orthopedic facility in New Berlin, and was also recently asked to help promote the Wisconsin Masters Games.

A high point of Diane and Terry’s first National Senior Games was watching and meeting the older ladies, including 95-year-old Joyce Jones, recognized as the oldest competitive pickleball player in the world. “Those women were a blast. I mean, she knew the guy who invented pickleball!” she exclaims. “So we’re like, ‘Right, regardless of what happens between now and then we want to be playing pickleball even at 80, let alone 90.’”

Diane and Mark Stelpflug on the volleyball courts at the 2025 Games.

Diane also enjoyed watching her husband help his volleyball teams win gold in two age divisions in his third trip to Nationals. Just as Mark recruited her to play volleyball when they met, he joined Diane in mixed doubles play at the state level, and the couple hopes to qualify and play pickleball together when The Games go to Tulsa in 2027.

Will Diane’s nerves ever heal? While always hopeful, she is realistic and does not dwell on wishing for a full recovery. “That kind of hope actually makes things harder,” she says. “When I went to Mayo clinic for treatment I’d go full of hope. And then I come back like, ‘Okay, it didn’t work,’ and that was hard on my psyche. I’m very optimistic, but I’m not necessarily hopeful that it’ll be gone. So I just do things that strengthen the muscles and keep me moving forward.”