Thursday, October 17, 2019 (Court Day #313)
69th day out playing lefty.
Today was the day for training with the UCSC retirees group, lead by a woman named Lynn. We were told 17 students would be coming. I left work very shortly after 3 and parked outside of Derby Park at 3:30. Out on the street, Tim McGarvey and Dan Bliss were unloading a car trunk full of paddles and bags. I offered and helped carry some paddles in.
Janet, Alan, Dan, Tim and John. (I’m taking the photo, of course!) John sharing the plan.
A few minutes after 4 p.m., John introduced us to the students and lead the group through some basics about the court and pickleball rules. For the demonstration, Alan was across from me, Dan was diagonal, and Janet was my partner to my right. (For all of this I opted to play right-handed.) John asked Dan and me to dink to show how it was done. A funny moment was when John asked me to pop up a shot and John told Dan, “Finish it.” I popped one up. Dan attacked it with a hard forehand slam. Me, never one to let a ball get by, manage to get Dan’s slam back over the net. There was a loud “Oooooooo!” from the students lining the fence. Dan and I continued to play the point a bit. Then John asked me to pop one up so Dan could finish the point. Me, of course, returned the slam again back over the net. Dan smiled, “That’s not cooperative!” Janet chimed in, “He’s very competitive!” At least the students got a demonstration that it’s possible to return a slam!
After the basics that had lasted about 15 minutes, each instructor was given three students to lead in a game. My three were Judd, Marion, and Marsha. Judd was the Boy Scout leader over 10 years ago when my son Nicholas went to 3-4 meetings. (It was not Nicholas’ “thing”.)
We started out with some more instructions then got into some games. I first played with Marsha as my partner. She asked, “Are you playing left-handed so that we have a chance?” “I won a gold medal playing left-handed.” (In other words, they’d have no chance regardless!) I went on with a short explanation of my tennis elbow woes.
At 5:02, I asked John if we could observe a moment for those lost in the 1989 earthquake. At 5:04 p.m., the minute of the quake 30 years ago, I blew my whistle and asked for 10 seconds of silence. John had been deep in conversation, somehow missed my whistle, and asked me a few minutes later if I was going to do the moment of silence! I wondered why he had been chatting during that time! Oops. LOL!
We played a three games total, me partnering with every student in my group. I’d stop between certain points and call everyone to the net for an explanation of how to learn from something that happened . . . like, “That is a perfect example of why you don’t step in after you serve!” I’d provide encouragement when they’d call the score correctly or make a nice shot. Games took longer with the frequent stops.
At the end, Marsha said, “You’re a great teacher!” I like to think so and an unsolicited compliment is always nice.
I brought my beginner pickleball strategies sheet that I made up yesterday and gave copies to John to hand out to folks. Here a PDF version what I handed out (though I have since updated the URL and added a copyright notice):
Pickleball-Strategies-Andrew-Lenz.pdf
By 6:11, the nets were down, and I was walking back out with Dan and Tim, carrying some paddles.
Scotts Valley
I got home and Kristen, my wife, said she was going to be busy checking her work email. “Aren’t you going to pickleball?” I said that I was checking in at home before making a decision. I was soon on the road and got to Skypark at 6:45. Cars were parked all wonky. But, someone had pulled out and there was a single open paved parking spot in the lot right next to the courts perimeter fence. Nice.
I played a couple of games against Eric—not Eric Schmidt—the other Eric whose girlfriend is Ann. Eric drove a rocket that hit me in the pointer finger of my left (paddle) hand. Man. That stung. It was a milder version of what it feels when you slam your finger in a door. Eric was blasting shots. The key was knowing when to just get out of the way—if you had time.
The last two games Rob and me against Cal and Shawnte. After a very questionable performance in the first game that lead to a loss for Rob and me, I asked for another game and added, “We’ll see if I can redeem myself!” Shawnte scuffawed, “You don’t need to redeem yourself—you’re playing left-handed!” Shawnte is good for some perspective!
I played better in the second game and Rob and I won that one.
In those two games there was a handful of Cal drives where Rob told me after each of my failed returns, “That was going out.” There were less of those in the second game. It’s still something that I need to learn . . . when to just let it fly!
At 9:41, we were done. The lights clicked off as we all walked from the courts to our cars. It’s great having four permanent courts there now at Skypark. It means we can play later without holding up Mark or Sharyl who’d have to stow the temporary nets.
Number of days on a court: 313
Number of total hours: 874
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