As October’s first-ever National Padel Month celebrates the people driving the sport’s growth in America, one of the inaugural USA Padel Awards is going to a man whose court time has always been about someone else. Retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Steven Harper, Executive Director of Military Adaptive Court Sports (MACS), has been named a USA Padel Service Award recipient for bringing padel to disabled veterans and wounded warriors across the country.

A Calling in San Diego

Harper’s path to padel began with a different racquet sport, in an unlikely place. He first picked up racquetball while on active duty in 2004, when he was assigned to a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine based in Kings Bay, Georgia.

The turning point came in 2009, while he was stationed in San Diego. While working out at the gym at Balboa Hospital, Harper watched a Marine with an amputated leg climb the stairs away from the courts. The thought struck him and became the founding idea behind everything that followed: “Go teach that Marine how to play racquetball.”

He founded the Military Racquetball Federation on the idea of setting up a portable outdoor racquetball court aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard, a Navy amphibious assault ship then based in San Diego. The organization later became Military Adaptive Court Sports, a nonprofit dedicated to rehabilitating disabled veterans and wounded warriors through court sports and funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs National Adaptive Sports Grants.

Teaching From a Wheelchair

Today, MACS runs turnkey six-week court-sports instructional programs, including pickleball, badminton, and padel, partnering with VA Medical Centers and military installations nationwide. Through VA grant funding, Harper has taught racquet sports at VA Medical Centers and military bases nationwide, including Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos), Walter Reed National Naval Medical Center, and Fort Belvoir, reaching more than 1,500 wounded service members and disabled veterans.

Harper is able-bodied, but he often coaches from a wheelchair, saying he does it “just to teach folks that it’s possible”. He has described the sessions as a mental release for veterans, and MACS says its racquet sports programs help participants cope with PTSD symptoms, amputations, spinal cord injuries (SCI), Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), and other illnesses.

Bringing Padel to Veterans

MACS added padel to its program lineup in 2023. By early 2024, he had run padel clinics for veterans from the Washington, D.C., Bronx, and Hudson Valley VA Medical Centers, and on February 15-17, 2024, it hosted a two-day adaptive padel clinic for the Miami VA Medical Center at ULTRA Padel Club. A recreational therapist there reported that veterans valued padel’s extra space and time to adjust to the ball compared with pickleball.

That spring, MACS and USA Padel celebrated two veteran groups who completed padel training programs. Nine veterans from the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center finished a six-week course at Padelphia in Philadelphia on February 21, with support from Chris Haley of the B’More Padel Club, while a group from the Hudson Valley and Bronx VA Medical Centers finished at Padel Haus in Brooklyn on April 26. The two teams were then scheduled to meet in a Memorial Day competition at Padelphia.

In October 2025, Harper led a two-day clinic for 16 veterans from the Atlanta VA Medical Center and surrounding area, hosted by Padel Haus Atlanta.

Honored by USA Padel

“Steven has spent his career in service to this country, and he has never stopped serving. Every clinic he runs puts a racquet in the hands of a veteran who might never have discovered padel, and shows them what is still possible on the court. On behalf of USA Padel, thank you, Steven, for everything you have given to our veterans and to our sport,” said Bill Ullman, President of USA Padel.

“National Padel Month is about bringing the game to new people and communities, and no one embodies that better than Steven. You travel the country, often coaching from a wheelchair, so that those who served can find the same joy in padel that the rest of us do. This award is a small way of saying thank you for your service to the nation and to padel,” said Scott Colebourne, CEO of USA Padel.

The inaugural USA Padel Awards are part of National Padel Month, alongside learn-to-play clinics at clubs nationwide and the US Open Padel Championships, recognizing the players, coaches, clubs and advocates behind padel’s growth in America.