Sunday, October 9, 2022 (Court Day #559)
Before I got up, my wife told me that it was pretty wet outside. I took a look and figured at least some courts would be playable. I decided not to delay play and take my chances with the headaches of not all courts being playable.
Last night, Ted had emailed me a sign to print out announcing the upcoming Parks & Rec Commission meeting, but had erroneously included the physical location of the meeting chamber. I made up a new sign in Adobe InDesign with only virtual meeting information and printed it out. There was some back and forth with Ted and John regarding whether the meeting was “hybrid” or just virtual. It turns out the eventual City Council meeting will be hybrid but the commission meeting is only virtual.
Regardless, this all made it so I arrived at Derby with no time to set up prior to opening. There were about 8 players already there. I spent about 10 minutes using towels to soak up the wettest areas of the courts, which were opposite corners of the courts. I left the portable net bags on those two courts as a warning to just use them for dinking. Fortunately, they were dry enough about an hour later to play full court games.
I played pretty well today, got some compliments.
At the end of the session, I played a game with Rosie against barefoot Terry and also Lisa whom I don’t know well. They barely hit to me—Rosie got a lot of work—which was good as my right knee was bothering me. By shortly after 2 p.m. I was hobbling a bit. At 2:18, we were done and I was checking my phone.
My knee got worse. I iced it and was elevating my leg. I was noticeably limping. Kneeling down on that leg was excruciatingly painful.
Monday, October 10, 2022 (No Play)
Today at 4 p.m. was the Parks & Recreation Commission meeting. On the agenda was the proposal for the city to enter into a 10-year agreement with U.C. Santa Cruz to replace two dilapidated tennis courts at a UC property on Delaware Avenue with eight pickleball courts for public use.
This is the agenda packet for this meeting, including the draft agreement between the city and UCSC:
https://ecm.cityofsantacruz.com/OnBaseAgendaOnline/Documents/ViewDocument/Parks___Recreation_Commission_Regular_Meeting_1837_Agenda_Packet_10_10_2022_4_00_00_PM.pdf?meetingId=1837&documentType=AgendaPacket&itemId=0&publishId=0&isSection=false
It took about half an hour to get through routine meeting things, such as roll call, approval of previous meeting minutes, a report on progress of the closure of a massive homeless encampment in the flood zone. (On a side note, the city removed 200 tons—TONS—of trash after they cleared about half of the encampment.) After that, the commission moved on to the first agenda item, the new pickleball courts. Tony Elliott, the P&R director gave an overview of the game, the growth of the sport, and the need for more courts.
I was one of five speakers lined up to speak by Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board member John Pacholski. There were a handful of others who spoke including two tennis players. One was against the proposal, wanting to keep Delaware for tennis. Another had no qualms about giving up Delaware, but wanted the plan of Derby being used solely tennis to be formally written into the proposal.
There were 2-4 speakers who jumped in on behalf of pickleball who were not lined up by SCPC to speak, but did a nice job.
Bathroom concerns were brought up and also someone suggested lights for night play. Lights were not even discussed due to the cost, but a Port-A-Potty was discussed among the commissioners. While one commissioner was pushing for a toilet, the vice chair of the commission instead suggested that the club could hold a fundraiser to cover the cost of it. Another commissioner suggested that it might not be really necessary given many people play for only a couple of hours. (There can be some truth to that. I know at least one or two players use it every session, but personally, in the nearly six years that I’ve played there, I’ve never needed use the bathroom, even with me drinking entire bottles of water and having sessions up to five hours.)
After the discussions, the commission vote was unanimous to proceed with the agreement with UCSC for 8 new permanent pickleball courts! If the City Council approves it, it’ll be the largest permanent facility in the county . . . Skypark and Brommer both have only 4 permanent courts.
Tuesday, October 11, 2022 (No Play)
An article was shared online…
Former junior Wimbledon champ Noah Rubin leaves tennis for pickleball
https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/34769098/former-junior-wimbledon-champ-noah-rubin-leaves-tennis-pickleball
So, Mr. Rubin decided to take an indefinite leave of absence from tennis a few weeks ago at age 26. Yesterday, October 10, he announced he was switching to pickleball.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 (No Play)
I’m hobbling less, but my knee is still very much problematic. Going up and down stairs is painful. I’ve never had a knee injury like this.
Thursday, October 13, 2022 (No Play)
René checked in on me for the upcoming tournament. I told her I was closer to heading to the doctor than playing and that I was planning on making a decision on our tournament over the weekend. But she was worried about being able to get a partner, so she found a replacement and arranged to have me be refunded my entry fee. Probably for the best. At this rate, I don’t see myself being ready to play in 10 days.
Thursday, October 20, 2022 (No Play)
It’s been 11 days since I tweaked my knee. Kneeling is still quite painful. Going up and down stairs is sometimes mostly ok, but other times, it’s one step gently at a time and still uncomfortable.
I met with my GP doctor this morning. He is almost certain that it’s a meniscus issue. He said to give it a month and see how it is. If it’s still the same or worse, we’ll proceed to an MRI. He said that if he were to send me to a specialist immediately, that doctor would just tell me to go home and wait too.
Tuesday, October 25, 2022 (No Play)
Sad news. The club sent out an email this morning notifying all of us that local player Susie Dougan died. She was playing at Brommer Park on Friday and fell on the courts, hitting her head. She was taken by ambulance to the ICU and tragically passed away yesterday (Monday) morning.
Susie was upbeat and genuine. She’ll be missed. She played in 70+ at Nationals and regularly up and down the west coast for years, and was on the medal stand frequently.
Note from a few days later: Jennifer Yoder said Susie suffered a stroke and collapsed on the court. Another said she was having balance issues after a stroke. I haven’t been able to confirm a definitive story.
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 (No Play)
This amusing video came up suggested by YouTube, which was uploaded two days ago.
I think it describes a number of us players!
Thursday, October 27, 2022 (No Play)
Pickleball appeared on national television again, on CBS Mornings. This was five days ago, but I just stumbled upon it.
That’s a pretty long segment!
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 (No Play)
Matt Babb texted me this morning checking on me since they hadn’t seen me at Skypark in almost a month. Quite thoughtful.
I found this video online today with Susie Dougan giving a promotion 9 years ago for Prem Carot, “The Pickleball Guru”:
Andrew’s Knee
I don’t want to be a whiner. Such as asking for an MRI when I don’t need one. It’s been 3 1/2 weeks since I injured my knee. Walking briskly currently has some mild pain. Kneeling is still solidly painful, maybe a 5, with 0 being no pain and 10 being “stop, stop, ow!” Taking stairs is much better, but still not comfortable.
Thursday, November 10, 2022 (No Play)
I keep going back and forth on getting my knee scanned. Overall, it’s trending well, improving. But it’s slow going. Walking is mostly much fine now. Sitting can still bother the knee. I flew to New Orleans for about 48 hours for a trade show and walking off the airplane Saturday night and into San Jose Airport was like someone had hit me in the knee with a hammer. Sitting for so long made it worse.
Monday, November 14, 2022 (No Play)
Being that our family business is part of the Santa Cruz Downtown Association, I get emails from them. A few weeks ago, one was sharing that registration would be opening for the annual Christmas…. er, “Holiday” Parade. Recalling that I’d seeing on Facebook a pickleball club participate in a parade, I contacted the SCPC board—passing along the registration information—and they came back saying the club wanted to participate. There was some back and forth with some board members lining up people to support the event. By the time I registered, we were placed on the eating list. When I wrote the association asking about getting off the waiting list, they gave me permission to pay the fee and to participate.
Today, I paid the $107 fee, so we are formally a “go” for the parade on Saturday, December 3. We just need to get someone to figure out a roller system for a portable net so we can push it along the parade route and demonstrate the game.
Thursday, November 17, 2022 (No Play)
This morning, an email blast went out explaining:
“Pickleball.com, along with its subsidiaries, the PPA Tour, PickleballTournaments.com, and PickleballBrackets.com, will adopt DUPR (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating) as its official and exclusive rating system.”
We’ll have to see what this means for USA Pickleball’s UTPR rating system, which it is known for a while has deficiencies. In the meantime, UTPR will be used for placing players in sanctioned tournaments and DUPR will be used for unsanctioned tournaments using the online tournament service.
Pickled!
Back in March, it was announced that CBS would broadcast the brain-child of comedian Stephen Cobert, “Pickled”, a celebrity charity pickleball tournament.
Today is the day. I set a phone alarm and plopped down in front of my iPad to watch. (I have a device that pulls broadcast signals from an antenna in my attic and shares it on my local network.)
There were 16 celebrities taking part. Of those, I only knew a handful: Will Ferrell (comedic actor of Elf and many lame movies), Emma Watson (actress of Harry Potter fame), Sugar Ray Leonard (boxer), and Luis Guzman (support actor). The remainder I didn’t even recognize… ok, maybe I’d seen some commercials for shows with Daniel Dae Kim in them.
A full list of teams can be found here:
https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/pickled-competition-special-reveals-star-teams-emma-watson-more/
(And Tig’s mystery partner was Will Ferrell.)
I will say, I almost turned it off after about 15 minutes. It was corny and the play was horrendously bad. Rallies were nearly nonexistent . . . and if they lasted more than a few shots, it was a series of newbie-style pop-ups.
You might be able to watch it with this link:
https://www.cbs.com/shows/video/F4kOixQFUmcGrGea1QEtjcHizvbf1Ttf/
As the show went on and the better teams advanced, the play got better and more entertaining. The championship match had some play that was on par with what I see locally in 3.0 games.
Things of note…
Emma Watson is a halfway decent player, The winners included a country music singer, who could easily hold his own with probably any of our local intermediate players.
Unfortunately, the show featured a short segment about that story I shared a few months ago about pickleball players taking over a children’s playground in New York City . . . that was negative publicity for the sport. Overall, though, I think the PR impact was good. It showed the sport as fun.
Oh, and a very pleasant and welcomed surprise, they had an authentic pickleball referee actually enforcing the rules. When Sugar Ray hit an apparent winner, the ref called him on a NVZ foot fault and the show took the time to share the ref’s explanation. Another similar moment was a violation of the double bounce rule.
Overall, I think it was good.
Number of days on a court: 559
Number of total hours: 2,516.5
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