Thursday, February 16, 2023. (Court Day #578)

This afternoon, my wife asked me if I was going to play pickleball tonight or not. Initially, I was thinking I was not but when she mentioned it, I started to think about it. By the end of the day, I decided I was going to go ahead and play. My wrist wasn’t bothering me too much and rain is predicted for next week according to my wife. I left work, raced home, changed, and drove out to Scotts Valley.

I arrived at Skypark in about 7 p.m. and the parking lots and side streets were full as well as the dirt parking alongside the courts. I pulled around and parked in the sketchy area in the back. I said sketchy because it’s more likely to get your car stuck in the uncompacted dirt.

As I walked in, all courts were in use and a few players were sitting or standing waiting to get onto court.

First Game

My first game was against Roman and Danny who were both at Derby Park on Sunday, and I was partnered with Max. It is a good thing that they were not among the strong players there tonight, because I started out slow. I was missing shots and feeding high easy balls for my opponents. Max and I found ourselves down a little bit, but my game still be improved and we came back and won.

My last game was with Rachel Kuo—my former high school classmate—against David and Minori. We played on borrowed time as it became 9:30 and we still hadn’t finished our game. Minori was mid-serve to Rachel, up 10-6, when the lights clicked off . . . ending our play before the end of the game. That was a funny one, we were scrambling to finish that game, getting into position and serving quickly.

And?

I made a handful of shots tonight where I kind of amazed myself about how good they were. On the flipside, I also had some shots, too many, where I was disgusted with myself. The disgusting shots definitely outnumbered the amazing shots.

Injuries

After Sunday’s play, I had a slight pull in my left quadricep. I barely noticed it tonight. But on a few backhand shots, I did notice the back of my hand hurting. When I got home, I had one cooling pack on my hand and the other on my right knee. Sigh.

Number of days on a court: 578
Number of total hours: 2,569
Number of paid coaching hours: 1

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