Thursday, September 29, 2022 (Court Day #555)

Yesterday, I mentioned NBA basketball player LeBron James buying a Major League Pickleball team. Today, I had two non-player co-workers mention it to me since they had seen it in the news. It’s crazy how much publicity pickleball is getting.

Skypark

I got the Skypark at about 6:50 p.m., and parked back alongside the courts since the paved parking lot was full. All the nets were set up and in use. It was a busy night.

Paul W. and Matt B. taking on Casey F. and his dad Tim F.

Tonight, it was the mix of mostly medium skill games. There weren’t really any games are truly challenging.

There was a man named Tim who was there—not Casey’s dad Tim—but a man who plays tennis primarily in the evenings and then moves over and plays pickleball after the tennis players leave. He and I played against Paul and his friend Matt and beat them tonight. Matt was not playing as best, but I was playing decently. Tim and I beat them by by fairly significant margin. Tim said it was his first time beating them and that I had played well.

So, Tim graduated from San Lorenzo Valley High School two years before I graduated from Harbor High School. Tim said he later went and coached Harbor’s tennis team for a period of time.

Top Tennis -> Entry Level Pickleball

There was a young fellow, Kourosh, was playing tennis who knew Tim and played tennis with him tonight. Tim said Kourosh was the #1 tennis player in the SCCAL (Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League) while at Aptos High School five years ago. I played with Kourosh as my partner against Paul and Matt. It was Kourosh’s second-ever pickleball game. Kourosh kept trying to topspin drive the ball and it kept ending up in the net. But Kourosh had crazy good angled shots and could cover a lot of the court…sometimes too much as he’d cross over to my side and poach a shot and mess it up. Still, he played well enough that we won. Afterward, Matt said he wasn’t feeling that good and stopped playing for the night. That explained his subpar performance.

Wrist Pain

While in a game with Minori against David and Sharyl’s son Kevin (whom I met tonight for the first time) I experienced noticeable pain on the inside of my right wrist on a backhand shot. This past week I’ve been noticing pain on the inside of my wrist while playing my practice chanter (a practice instrument for playing bagpipes). This is worrisome. The lights clicked off at 9:30 in the midst of this game.

Blast from the Past

A bunch of us were still there and hung out and shared snacks for a good 45 minutes.

By far, the most memorable event of the evening was finding out that one of the pickleball players there tonight, Rachel, was in my graduating class at Harbor High School. She’s said she’s been playing pickleball for about three months. She comes from a very strong tennis background; she was the #1 tennis player on the tennis team back in high school, and continues to play even now. That’s pretty impressive.

Me and Rachel. She asked for a photo and I got a copy.

We chatted about classmates and teachers and caught up a bit. It was a fun surprise!

Number of days on a court: 555
Number of total hours: 2,504

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