Sunday, July 9, 2017 (Court Day #42)
Playing softball on Friday night, I aggravated my right glute muscle. Sore. And my right knee hurts a bit. But my hips are better, so that’s good. (Oh, our team lost for the first time, we’re 3-1 now. Since I was alternating batting with my younger brother in the lineup, I was up only twice. But I got a single and a double, so I’ll take that!) My quads are still a little sore from sprinting while base running, but nothing to write home about.
Speaking of home, I drove over to John P.’s house last night to pick up his extra paddle for my neighbor Jill who’s going to be taking a pickleball class—maybe this week. I walked it over to her husband Erick about 9:30 last night and he showed me the wood paddle she had bought at Play It Again Sports. I demonstrated with him the weight difference. “Oh, yeah.” She’ll be much happier with John’s.
The plaque at the park honoring
Sgt. Charles Derby of the Santa Cruz Police.
I arrived at Derby Park at 9:10 a.m. with temperatures about 60 degrees but it’d climb later into the 70s. There was one game already underway. Mike arrived about a minute before me and we warmed up together. Eric appeared a few minutes later. Soon we had a game going. It took a bit longer for things to pick up, but eventually we had the waiting dry-erase board out, but it wasn’t long before it was unnecessary.
Take aways from today…
I still have to be careful about rushing the net on my shots that are able to be driven back. Mike sternly reminded me of that in a game where we played as partners. (Though we did win, he couldn’t complain too much.) After one exchange, Mike chuckled, “You did everything wrong, but you still managed to win the point.” Later, when playing against him and Maree, I overheard him telling Maree [paraphrasing], “He [me] has a rocket forehand.” Nice to hear. Sometimes you get compliments, sometimes not so much!
And holy crap. I’ve ready about people losing their serves. I must have have missed at least 10 serves in today’s 3 hours. It was miserable. Most, if not all, were from being too deep. I just need to refocus. Jerry’s class made point of serving deep, but I’m overdoing it.
The third shot drop. In the last game, played with Mark, Kirsten, Eric and myself, I made number of successful third shot drops. It can be done. (Eric and I lost, but not by much. I made my share of mistakes—ok, and I did play the first four serves left handed—and a few of Eric’s often trustworthy third shot drops ended up in the net.)
Neither here nor there, but fun—I played a game with Marianne and a man and a woman I’d seen before, but aren’t really regulars. During the game, Marianne said, “You jumped up and hit that!” “Yeah.” “You hit it out of the air.” “Yeah.” It’s a bit of a novelty for some older folks!
I left at 12:12, with Mark, Erick, Maree and fourth starting a game that they had planned earlier. I would have played longer but you need other players!
While my serves took a dive and I wasn’t perfect, I felt pretty good overall about my play today. Some definite positives.
Even a few hours after leaving the courts, I’m ready to get out and play again. Alas. But I’ll be at Jerry Louis’ class on Tuesday for my final installment of that.
Number of days on a court: 42
Number of total hours: 119.5
Leave a Reply