Sunday, April 29, 2018 (Court Day #146)

I arrived at Derby Park at 8:50 and started setting up. “Where is everyone?”, asked Dean, who was the first one to appear about five minutes after 9. We talked a bit about the Paso Robles tournament. It took longer than normal for folks to trickle in but we did eventually set up all six nets with a couple of players waiting to join games—about 26 people.

Karl and I played the first game against Dean and Susi. As expected, they pulled well ahead. Dean had some shots he could have taken to hit a winner, but would sometimes hit to prolong the game instead. Even with that, surprisingly, we were able to tighten the score so we only lost 11-6 or thereabouts.

A man named Chris and his wife Selena and their middle school aged son and his two friends came to learn pickleball. I spent about 45 minutes to an hour explaining the rules and officiating a learning game between the couple and two boys followed by a game of one of the boys and me against Chris and Selena. Selena has a competitive streak! I could tell that she was getting frustrated when her shots didn’t go trnway she wanted! But they all did a good job getting the ball back over the net. They thanked me for introduction to the game and said they had a fun time.

I managed one last game of Olga and me against Oleg and Janet. Olga and I won, it was a fun game, I seemed to be playing a bit better.

I was in my car by 12:50 and on my way home to tackle the blackberry bush growing outside our kitchen window!

Tournament Wrap-Up

Barbara Secola and John P. Pacholski won silver in 60+ 3.0 mixed doubles today. And (Vinny, our first match adversary/new friend from Bakersfield and his woman partner took bronze in 3.5 50+. We now know Vinny is over 50!) Also Barbara Secola and Sherry Taylor took silver yesterday in 60+ 3.0 women doubles. Santa Cruz players took home four medals total from Paso Robles this year.

Number of days on a court: 146
Number of total hours: 412

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