Saturday, August 10, 2019 (Court Day #294)
Cabrillo Tournament – Mixed Doubles

54th day out playing lefty. Tennis elbow.

I arrived at Cabrillo about 8:20 a.m. Mike Hoxie, the tournament director, said in an email that we had to be there by 8:30 and that all matches were starting at 9 a.m. regardless of bracket.

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The business area of the tournament. The near tent was for injuries. The two right tents were hospitality with food and drinks and chairs to hangout in.

There were a bunch of courts! I was impressed! There were at least 16 plus another handful for warm up. Karen Long was there and I gave her some Santa Cruz Pickleball Club informational signs that I’d made up on behalf of the club. She was going to pass them along to Dave Allenbaugh for laminating and posting at our local courts.

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Carrie got Mark G. (who was volunteering today) to take our photo on her phone.

There were plenty of empty courts to warm up on, so Carrie and I did some dinking until we all got called over for the group tournament instructions.

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Mark Ramsay, welcomes the competitors while Mike Hoxie (in red) looks on. Olga’s head is in the lower right corner. She was playing with Binh in the 3.5 under-50 bracket.

After Mike Hoxie (TD) and Mark Ramsay (the Athletic Director of Cabrillo College) spoke, Karen Long, an official USAPA Ambassador and current president of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club, was given an opportunity to address the competitors. She thanked Kim and Jennifer (Watson Yoder) for spearheading this event.

We had the National Anthem (a recording) then dispersed to our courts to play. We’d be playing games to 11.

Here was our bracket:
PickleballBracket-2019Aug10

Eight teams, seven rounds of games. For whatever reason, they decided to hold it as a round robin instead of double elimination, which is great, we are all guaranteed seven games instead of two.

Match #1

We had our first match right off the bat at Court #3. We played against Lorraine—she said only her friends call her “Rainey”—and Ed, both from the south San Francisco area. We lost that first game 11-5. It wasn’t really ever close. It was a disappointing start.

Match #2

Becky and Roy from the Monterey area were our second opponents. We lost 11-0! I hit two service returns into the net and another two service returns long. That was 4 points right there. Miserable. Becky hit one shot between us which was my fault for not tracking enough to the left. Becky hit one shot at my shoulder from the kitchen off a high ball from Carrie and I wasn’t ready and my return sailed out. A consistent theme for the morning—and most mixed matches—our opponents were very much targeting Carrie. 

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In a match. Honestly, I’m not sure which one. This photo was taken and shared later—along with other photos—with the members of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club.

Match #3

In a game against locals Jim and Sharon, we lost 11-3. This game should not have been nearly this lopsided.

Of particular note in this game was during warm up, Jim hit a shot down the right sideline. I switched my paddle to my right hand to get it back to him and—PAIN! The ball sailed wide to the right. This intense and surprising pain was in my right shoulder. Wow. I really need to get it looked at.

Match #4

Locals Kristin and Mike were our opponents for the fourth match. Kristin is funny. While we were all hanging out in the shade of the injury tent, She jokingly asked how my car was. (She backed into it at the Scotts Valley courts about a year ago.) We kidded back and forth as Mike enjoyed the exchange. Oh, and Kristin early had said they’d won first game 15 to something. “15?” I told her that we were all playing to 11. She said Jennifer had told them that they were playing to 15. Oops. A little administration confusion!

Carrie and I took the lead off the bat and held it for quite a while, it was 6-2 in our favor. We continued to lead most of game including to the point of 9-5. But then they went on a run and came back and won 11-9. Bummer! So close.

Match #5

Our next game was against Lori Cambridge (lives in Aptos) and Roger (Pleasanton). Being that they were from two different towns, I figure that Lori and Roger had signed up independently without a partner and were thrown together as a team.

Someone had taken and kept the starting server band from the basket so there was only one which our opponents took. There wasn’t one for me to wear. After a few points, Lori was obviously irritated about me having no band—especially with Carrie and I stacking—so she walked over to the next court and since it was between matches, she took a band out of its basket and gave it to me to wear.

Carrie and I  lead early and chugged along and won 11-8.

After the match, I asked Mike Hoxie if he had some extra bands since one of the courts was missing one and he produced a whole bag. I took a couple—one for court we’d just played on and another for me just in case another court was missing bands.

Match #6

Lisa from Danville and Ed from Walnut Creek were our next opponents. After our win, we were feeling more confident. But after not very long, we were down by a lot of points. We came back to 10-6, but they got that last point and we lost 11-6. 

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A panorama of one side of the courts.

We had a rather long wait until our last match. I think it was almost 45 minutes.

Match #7

Husband and wife team Rick and Kelly May from San Juan Bautista were our last game. They set up a camera on a tripod to record the game. They steamrolled to a 11-2 win. It was never in doubt. Carrie and I made our only stacking mistake in this game. Our score was even and Carrie got the ball and served from the right side—I didn’t even think to check if she was the correct server and just assumed she was right . . . a dumb mistake since she was relying on me to tell her what to do with regard to stacking. After the point—which we lost anyway—Kelly called us out on the mistake and Carrie served again but as the correct (second) server from the correct court. It would have been a real drag had we won that point and had to have given it up!

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The nearly final bracket grid. For the bottom sheet, you read the columns down for a particular team’s score in a game and to find the opponents score in a game with us, you go down their column until you meet our horizontal line.

Tennis Elbow

I did take maybe a dozen service returns with my right hand—those that came significantly to my right side. Everything else was left-handed including all of my serves.

After our last, I walked over to the Mays and chatted for a minute. Rick said he had really bad tennis elbow and tried a bunch of forearm bands until he settled on the Bandit. It’s the same brand that Stuart had recommended to me months ago. I’m going to have to get myself one of those.

Wrap-Up

I feel bad that I got Carrie into this, even though she was a very good sport about the experience. She wasn’t looking to get into tournament play but I asked her. If you do the math, we averaged just over 5 points per game—5.142 points to be more exact. It wasn’t a fun experience for us losing games 11-0, 11-2, 11-3. Me, playing left-handed, and her less than a year into pickleball and her used to her tennis-based drive shots being more effective against run-of-the-mill players. Tournament players are much better handling drives. We were the second worst team out of eight. Carrie wasn’t quite ready in her skill development and I’m often optimistic to a fault and thought our opponents wouldn’t be as tough as they were.

Men’s Doubles

As I was on my way out around 1 p.m., Binh said, “We’re going to have some tough competition tomorrow.”

Forearm Band

I found a Bandit online and ordered one. I still need to get a more elbow-friendly paddle too for the day I get to return to playing with my right hand.

Number of days on a court: 294
Number of total hours: 813.5

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