The Jewel Basin Center is a passion project for Bigfork resident Jim Lafferty, who never expected his pickleball and entertainment venue would become a destination for players all over the world. 

The Jewel Basin Center’s Two Rivers Pickleball club has 1,800 members, who welcome hundreds more each year during tournaments and visits, according to Lafferty. He said that people now seek them out, looking to play on their state-of-the-art outdoor courts that overlook the Swan Mountain Range.

Even big name players like Scott Moore, who was once the top male player in the world, have started to take notice. Lafferty said Moore’s company Pickleball Trips coordinates vacations there every summer for visitors interested in seeing Montana while playing their favorite game. The company travels all over the world for these pickleball trips, but the only U.S. location they offer is Bigfork, Montana. 

But, it wasn’t always a guarantee that the Jewel Basin Center would take off. The business is one of the last big projects for Lafferty, a lifelong entrepreneur. 

Lafferty has been living in Bigfork for many years, part-time since 2002 and full-time since 2019, but he is originally from Washington D.C. He said he grew up there, later moving to Pennsylvania as a teenager where he met his wife Patti in the 8th grade. After completing his high school and undergrad there, the couple moved west, and Lafferty’s career began in earnest. 

Working as a serial entrepreneur, he started his first company at 28-years-old and sold his last three-and-a-half years ago. He said his largest endeavor was a medical device company that specialized in reconstructing bones in the body, which was later sold to Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway. 

Lafferty’s background is in biomedical engineering, which sometimes comes to the forefront when watching club members play pickleball. 

“I get really nervous when I walk around this place and see people doing stupid things that can fracture things,” Lafferty joked. 

The couple lived in California for a little over a decade before making a more permanent move to Dallas, where they lived for 28 years. 

In Texas, Lafferty and his wife were introduced to pickleball. They learned the game from some of the founders of the Super Senior International Pickleball Association, he said. When they decided to live in Bigfork full-time, he knew he wanted to start something similar in Montana.

“When I did it, it was all about just the passion for the sport and bringing this type of club culture to Montana, which I enjoyed at my club in Texas ... In particular, the founder that was my personal coach, he actually certified me to be a teaching professional pickleball over eight years ago. So, I became the first certified coach in Montana,” Lafferty said. 

He sent out slideshow presentations to friends and neighbors in Bigfork, trying to drum up interest in the relatively new sport. It was his way of doing some market testing to see who would not only like to join a club, but who would be willing to pay to join. Pickleball was a relatively inexpensive sport to get into, but building and supporting a new club would come at a cost. 

“We have 186 inaugural members on a plaque in our lobby that says, ‘Build it and we will come,’ so that’s when it started,” he said. 

Lafferty eventually settled on a plot of land off Montana 82 and began the work of opening his dream club, which would also serve as a venue for local events, like concerts. The building’s large garage doors on the patio provide ample ways to use the space, whether for music events or for just connecting the outdoor courts with the indoors on sunny days. 

Construction took place during 2020, and despite all of the hesitations that came with undertaking a new business in the beginning of the pandemic, the Jewel Basin Center opened that fall. 

“The weird thing is, for pickleball, not just here, but everywhere—Covid spiked the interest in pickleball. It went from nobody ever hearing of it, to now, it’s like the hottest thing going on. It’s on TV, it’s on ESPN---we’ve got famous tennis players jumping in and big sponsors behind it now,” Lafferty said. 

The increase in enthusiasm for the sport has also been seen in Northwest Montana. The club continues to host two pickleball tournaments, the Crown of the Continent Tournament, which had nearly 300 people sign-up last year, and the Summer Classic, which brings in a more local crowd of around 90 people. 

While their tournaments last three days, Lafferty said these visitors could stay and have an economic impact in the region far beyond the games.

“People come up and they build vacations around it. So, we have a lot of people that come  here from out of town, for example, over half of our attendees for the tournament come from outside of Montana,” Lafferty said. 

While it’s great to bring in visitors to the club, Lafferty lights up talking about their club’s most dedicated members, ranging from young kids to the elderly. 

He said they have one member who just turned 93 this year. 

“He plays pickleball four days a week and the other days he golfs, he’s an inspiration ... One day, Bob called me, and he sounded like a teenager. He couldn’t wait to come back to the club and he wanted to know how to get his membership activated again, asking if he could get in on an open play on Tuesday, and it’s like he was a kid again,” Lafferty said. 

To learn more about the Jewel Basin Center or the Two River Pickleball Club, visit their website at tworiverspickleball.com.