Drilling with René on Wednesday

Wednesday, September 28, 2022 (Court Day #554)

René and I had arranged to drill this morning and she was dropped off five minutes from my house where I picked her up at 7:45 a.m. From there, we headed straight to Derby Park and when we arrived there were six women playing. As soon as we walked up, two of the women ran across the courts and claimed the second—and only remaining functional—city net. I guess they didn’t want it until we wanted it! Fortunately, today was a club day and, of course, I have keys to the storage bin so I opened it up and set up one of the club nets early. (Even though I’m a site coordinator for the SCPC, I can’t use club equipment willy-nilly on random days/times whenever I feel like it. But setting up an net a little earlier than required is in the “fudge room” in my book.)

Drilling

René and I did some sliding dink drills passing each other in opposite directions on each side of the net at the kitchen line. We also did the drill Terry Long taught at a clinic few years ago that Eric and I have done over the years . . . that’s the one where a player starts the baseline and other is at the kitchen and the kitchen player serves cooperatively to the person at the baseline and person at the baseline needs to work up to the kitchen while the person at the kitchen tries to keep the other person back. (Clear as mud?) We did these drills for about 45 minutes.

René had only got about five and half hours sleep and I was up earlier than normal with a little less sleep as well. After playing last night too, I was just tired today. Half an hour into those drills, René was asking what time it was, thinking it was close to the 9 a.m. opening time. Nope, that was only 30 minutes!

René and I had a number of games over the session. Nearly all were challenging.

We played against Jackie and Eric and got clobbered. We were just not playing well.

We played against her friend Rick and Mark G. on two occasions in the morning and won both.

Later on, during one game, René reached out to hit a passing shot along the right sideline and strained her shoulder. She said she had done this somewhat recently before. She sat out the rest of the session’s games—probably about 45 minutes.

We were done and out shortly after noon.

I was disappointed with my play and our play as a team. But I know we were both exhausted. Plus I’ve been on antibiotics since last week when I had a tooth pulled. (Fortunately, that ends tomorrow!)

Silver Lining?

On the bright side, on the day, I remember missing only one of my serves but at least half a dozen of my opponents’ returns never made it back over the net. René complimented me on my serving today.

Oh, and today I passed 2,500 hours of time at the courts. Milestone.

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