Sunday, October 10, 2021 (Court Day #419)

I arrived at Brommer a few minutes after 9 a.m. under sunny skies. This would be my last day at Brommer before resuming my duties as site coordinator at Derby Park nearer my house. I’m hoping to stronger players will turn up at Derby. Brommer is typically the hub for higher level play.

Mark G. was warming up with a woman I didn’t know. Mark invited me to join them. It turned out that there was a reason that I didn’t know Jenna—she just moved to town. She grew up in Valencia and her parents (in their mid-60s) are fanatical pickleball tournament players. With a degree in Marine Biology, Jenna moved to town for a part-time job teaching middle school kids about the ocean through some educational outreach organization that I’ve never heard of. Jenna has very good hand-eye coordination, but she likes to stay back from the net and is still pretty green. If she sticks with it, she will a solid player.

Today was very light day. We topped out under 25 players. I mentioned to Mark that maybe there was a tournament going on . . . but he said none that he knew of. It was odd that they were so few players.

77-year-old John at the net as his partner Tim M. looks on! Dave Cox on the far court.
Chris—seen him a couple times before—and new-to-town Jenna taking on John and Tim.

Play

I played all right early on. Ok. Not great. But not bad either.

Toward the end of the session, I played with Art against Patty and Dave Cox. I was playing fantastically well in our first game. I maybe made one bad shot the whole game. Dave and Art were the weak players in this game. Art and I won. We played a second game . . . early in the game, I made three mistakes in a row, but I dialed it back in and played really well the rest of that game. This game was closer, but Art and I still won. There was one shot where I drove a ball low over the net between Patty (across from me) and Dave (to the right) and neither had a good shot. “That was lucky, Andrew!” It was Patty. But that shot was not luck. It did exactly as I wanted. “Luck? The more I play, the luckier I get!” (I think the actual quote is something like, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”) A few shots later, I made another shot much like the first with a similar result. More skill than luck. Not that it’s 100% reliable.

Today was an “up day” on the skill growth curve. I was very happy with my play.

Toes Stepped On!

I found a YouTube channel today with the name of . . . yes, Pickleball Journey. It looks to be about 7 months old. Nevermind that I’ve had a blog called that for nearly five years and I’ve had PickleballJourney.com as my website for nearly 3 years now. It make me mildly annoyed. You’d think you’d look around and see if someone else is already using the name you wish to use for “branding” your channel. Maybe he saw mine and it stuck in his subconscious as good one.

Monday, October 11, 2021 (No Play)

I’m now on the Google group/forum/email list for USAPA ambassadors. One digest came in today with a link to an interactive round robin generator found at the Pickleball Tournaments website:
Round Robin Chart Generator
https://www.pickleballtournaments.com/rrgenerator1.pl

Court Board

I had been asked by Leslie (site director for the club) to refurbish a dry-erase board for use at Derby Park. I finished the lines, then this morning, I came early to work. Being that we run a custom framing shop as part of our business, I headed to our warehouse and cut some old discontinued metal frame moulding to use as a tray for the bottom edge. Aside from bolting it on, it was done by the opening time for our business.

Bolts and locknuts from the hardware store and done!


Number of days on a court: 419
Number of total hours: 2,092.5

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