Month: October 2021 (Page 4 of 5)

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.

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.

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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.

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

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Friday, October 8, 2021 (Court Day #418)

It’s been a very long time since I’ve played at Brommer on a Friday morning. Fortunately, we had enough staff at work to allow me to take the morning off and attend the Santa Cruz Pickleball’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) . . . after playing some pickleball first!

I was going to get there by no later than 9, but my daughter needed a ride to work, so I dropped her off and didn’t get to Brommer until about 10 minutes before 10 a.m. The courts were all full, including all the temporary net courts.

More the Merrier

There was about as much waiting as they was playing today. Carol (Shawnte’s mom) said she would normally be playing at Skypark but had come for the AGM. Normally, I’d be working, so, yes, there were a lot of extra people at Brommer today.

Games

My first game was Steve B. (who is on the SCPC board) and me against Dan Bliss (also on the board) and a woman who I’d seen before, but didn’t know well. In the middle of the game, I turned to Steve and said, “Have you been in a game that you just want to flush?” Yeah. I wasn’t playing the best. Sure, it was my first game, but . . . man. Steve and I did end up winning, but ick. I made far too many bad shots.

I played a game with Dave Cox—who had signed up in red/advanced—against Hemi and her friend Brendan. It was a very contested game. I think we lost, but regardless, it was close. I didn’t play my best in that game either. Today was one of those “down days” on the skill growth curve. I don’t consider any of us as 4.0+ players, we’re all more blue/intermediate players.

After me playing what I felt was poorly in that game, I signed up in an intermediate box. I won’t mention any names—they are players I barely know anyway—but I played lefty and slaughtered them. They weren’t true intermediates. That’s the challenge of a signup board . . . people invariably sign up in a skill level above what they are. No one wants to sign up as the bottom skill level. Shawnte and I were talking about it. He’s contention is that we should have four skill levels for signup since no one will ever use the bottom skill level! In the meantime, we have three levels and people sign up in two.

Migrating

It was funny, I’d barely seen Terry and Karen Long—maybe once in the last six months—and I asked Terry if he just got back . . . there was some snickering by someone next to Terry . . . no, they were just about to leave for Arizona! If I’d thought about it for a second, I would have realized that with the weather in each area, they are in Santa Cruz during the summer and in the hotter desert during winter!

Group Photo

At noon, Leslie immediately started taking down the club nets to prepare and signal the pending AGM. I helped take down a couple myself. Once that was done, Karen Long corralled the herd for a big group photo to use on the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club website for the next year or so:

The AGM

We gathered over in the picnic area right after all the club nets were removed from the courts at noon. Some players continued to play on the permanent courts, expressing no interest in club plans for the area, officer elections, etc. New SCPC officers were elected by acclamation as they all ran unopposed. John Pacholski took over from Dave Witte as Treasurer for a two year term, Mark Dettle took over as President from Karen Long who was leading this meeting. Tony S. took over as Secretary from Dave Allenbaugh.

Dave W. gave a report on the state of finances of the club which is good.

Rick A. was announced by Karen as the new site coordinator for Derby Park on Wednesday and I was announced as the Derby Sunday site coordinator. Since it wasn’t clear that I was resuming my role, I proclaimed, “I’m back!” to the group for the benefit of those people whom I didn’t know. Jim D. was announced as the site coordinator for Willowbrook.

The meeting concluded about 1 p.m. Two years ago, the AGM included a potluck, but with the pandemic limping along, they kept it simple this year.

My Play

It seems that this past week, I have been more frustrated and disappointed in my play than anything. My forearm is holding up but it’s still a touch sore. It really needs a break of about a week to heal up, I think. But I doubt it’ll give it that.

Number of days on a court: 418
Number of total hours: 2,089

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021 (Court Day #417)

I arrived at Skypark at 6:35 p.m. and the sun was setting. There was a tennis couple on tennis court that we used as overflow for our portable nets, but fortunately it wasn’t as busy as some nights and the four permanent courts was just about right.

I had a number of games with Mike Ballard, Sharyl, Kristin L., Mark Dettle, and John A. It was a very fun and challenging evening. I’ll admit that in the games later that I played right handed, I was frustrated with some of my shots . . . mostly the failure of my drop shots. I missed far too many of those. That and I hit several would-be winners too far out past my opponents baseline—you get excited, right?

I looked at John A. as Mike and Mark left . . . “Singles?” But he was too tired. We were done and out at 8:48.

Death Threat

John shared that more happened with that park neighbor who confronted us in the parking lot on Thursday last week. After I got into my car that night, the guy followed John to his car and asked, “Are you planning to do this again?”
John avoiding furthering the unwanted conversation, didn’t respond.
“If you do, I’ll break your f–king neck.”
At this John replied, “Then you really will be breaking the law.”*
“I don’t care about the f–king law.”
*This was alluding to the guy’s ridiculous suggestion that we had tried to break into his house because his automatic yard light went on earlier.
Sounds like a real jerk. Too bad he lives right by the parking lot entrance. And there is no small irony that he called law enforcement to report people staying 10 minutes past the park closure time (when the lights didn’t go off when they were supposed to).

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Wednesday, October 6, 2021 (No Play)

This morning at 10 a.m. was my last PT appointment. I met with Casey, whom I’d met for my first PT appointment those so many months ago. My timing was good, Casey is leaving Precision Physical Therapy for a new job working for Kaiser and his last day is in about two weeks. Going forward, I’ll be on my own with my exercises.

After what John told me last night and since I was in Scotts Valley anyway for PT, I stopped by the SVPD and explained what had transpired to the uniformed woman behind the glass. She suggested it would be good to have the threatened individual report it—I was there for advice, not to make a report, since I knew I’d just be hearsay. I’ll leave it to John’s comfort level if he wants to do anything about the incident. But that threat does make me uncomfortable.

My right arm is bugging me. Both the inside of my elbow and the outside. I keep a bagpipe practice chanter—a wind instrument much like a recorder—on my desk at work. After closing, I played a quick tune and could feel the sore muscle in my forearm.

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Thursday, October 7, 2021 (No Play)

My right elbow is a bit sore. It’ll be a little bit of pain with random things, like certain positions on the steering wheel, or moving my arm while doing things at my desk at work. Regardless, I’ll be playing tomorrow morning at Brommer Park. It’s the day of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club Annual General Meeting which will start at about noon. I’ll go play, hopefully more lefty than righty, if I can control myself!

Number of days on a court: 417
Number of total hours: 2,087

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.