Maintain A Consistent DB Connection Through Application Lifecycle

Hey everyone,
 I'm new to .NET and I've recently inheirited a rather large and busy asp.net website.  I was asked to add a testimonials section on each page that will randomly pull a testimonial out of the db.  This is fine, however, I'm getting random errors about the DB connection either being closed or connecting.  Here is the code for the testimonials class:
 1 public SqlDataReader GetTestimonials(ref SqlDataReader reader, int iCatID, string sLanguageType)
2 {
3 SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("sp_DVX_Testimonials_Fetch", Connection);
4 cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
5
6 cmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Cat_ID", iCatID));
7 cmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@LanguageType", sLanguageType));
8
9 reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
10
11 return reader;
12 }

 I know this isn't the best way to do this (especially for each page[this site averages about 1000 hits a day]), so I was wondering was--is there a way to maintain a single DB connection that's set up in the Application_Start that will maintain the connection so I don't have to worry about this error.  If not, does anyone and any ideas as to what would help?
 
Thanks in advance!