Wednesday, December 27, 2017 (Court Day #106)

I put on my court shoes. Uh. Problem. I switched to my old pair with the tread worn off instead. More about that later.

I walked onto the court about 9:20—I got caught on the phone with my wife while still in my car.

The first game was Eric and Jane (tall blonde woman) against Rolando and me. I was playing well right off the bat. I was playing a very clean game. Rolando was executing third shot drives, but they weren’t working. Mid-game I stopped him. “Rolando, this is a rec game. Go ahead and work on your drop shots. You can get away with drives to players at the net depending on their skill level. These two are too good. They’re just smacking them angled off the court.” Rolando is such a nice guy, I hate being critical, but it was a key coaching moment. I used to do the same thing myself when I was starting. Rolando and I did fine. Eric and Jane won, but they didn’t “walk away” with the game.

Eric and I played a match against Ted (the Asian fellow who usually plays at Brommer) and Tom Sherwood. Ted said, “I heard you’ll be playing in a tournament.” Eric and I won 11-0. It wasn’t all in one service, there was back and forth, but the result wasn’t much in doubt once we got started. Tom told me midway though, “You are playing very well.” “That’s what happens when I play two days in a row!” Eric and I didn’t bother to ask to switch at 6 points, we just played the entire game with the sun in our eyes. “There’s a gold medal right there!”, said Ted afterward.

The next game was Ted and Mark (Marie’s husband) against us. Eric and I found ourselves down 5-1. Ted liked to lob with the sun at his back. At 6-1, we switched sides! (As an aside, the sun is noticeably lower in the sky than during summer. This makes the sun even more of a factor in many high balls.) Eric and I clawed back to 7-9, but Ted and Mark managed to score a couple of points and wrapped up the game 11-7. That was a fun game though. Challenging for both sides.

Visitor from Denver

There was a guy named Michael visiting from Denver. I offered to play with him as my partner against Laura (Terry’s wife). I know what it’s like to be a visitor at an unknown pickleball club. I called over, “Sharyl! Want to play?” We had our fourth. When I was about to receive the ball, he lined up about three to four feet behind the kitchen line. “Uh, oh.”, I thought. I did my best to overcome the weaknesses in his game. Nice guy, though needs to learn more pickleball strategy and execution.

Tournament

I told Eric that our Livermore registration was mailed yesterday. I told him that I thought it’d be a good idea if we sign up for Paso Robles when it opens rather than waiting until after we play at Livermore. “It’ll be better to ask to change grades than to try to get them to add us altogether.” He agreed. “Let’s sign up for 3.0.” I agreed—we can always ask to move to 3.5 later.

Cut Short

Eric signed up in a square on the scheduling board in “advanced red”. “Eric! You signed up in red! Well, if you are signing up in red, I’m signing up in red too!” I added my name under his in red.

I checked my phone for messages. There was a few. The important one was from my shop manager Jackie: “Thomas never showed up so it’s just me and Sky in the back and it’s been a little busy.” Uh, oh. Not good. We try to keep a staff of at least four and Sky has only about a month of experience. Yeah. When you are part of the store owner’s family, you can work whenever you want! Yeah, right. Not.

I told Eric I was going to have to leave for work. Eric’s disappointed response: “Awwww!” That brought a smile to my face. It’s nice to be wanted!

Shoes

Back to my shoes. Well, yesterday, I used epoxy to glue my insoles into my shoes. Since it didn’t hold last time, I used more. I debated slipping the shoes on to make a good connection with the glue, but opted not to, figuring it might ooze the glue sideways and over too large of an area. Mistake! When I tried on the shoes this morning, I could easy feel the lumps of epoxy under the heel and ball of each foot. Bad. Later in the day, I was able to remove the insoles. Now I’ve got to scrape off the dried epoxy and try again. *sigh*

Number of days on a court: 106
Number of total hours: 297

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