Sunday, May 14, 2023. (Court Day #593)

I woke up still very tied. I finally fell sleep about 12:30 this morning and woke up before 7 a.m. Not a massive loss of sleep, but my wife was convinced that I didn’t get a good night’s sleep because I snored a lot. Maybe so. Regardless, I was tired.

It was a misty morning. It was wet enough that I was slightly concerned about the courts needing work to be playable, but when I arrived at Derby Park about 8:45, they were in good shape. Barbara had opened the bins and was blowing off the courts. I got out the nets and started setting them up. In short order, we were ready to go and while it was initially a lighter crowd—we had only two games going at shortly after 9 a.m., the crowd would later grow to 46 people.

I played a mixed=skill game with Sarah, Martijn’s wife. Afterward, I mentioned the game being fairly balanced—I was paired with the weakest player—and she was amused and remarked about me “slamming the ball at us.”

By mid-morning, I was dragging and feeling exhausted, but after not being able to play for over a week, I wasn’t about to leave!

Blog Reader

Dan D., the local middle school teacher and coach who has become a regular, mentioned that someone told him about my blog. “I started reading and 4 1/2 hours later I realized how much time had gone by!” He added, “I didn’t know you had spent so much time being injured and playing left handed.” At that moment, his waiting group got called out to an open court and that was the end of our conversation.

Other Knee Pain?!?

My right knee is lined up for surgery in about two weeks. But today, my left knee was hurting on the inner side. Really? My left knee now? I’m hoping this won’t be a chronic thing. This is the last thing I need. My right hand and wrist continue to hurt so I’m still wearing a wrist brace for every outing. I’m holding off tennis elbow with a forearm strap. Fortunately, that has been precautionary for the most part.

More Play

Petite Linda with the English accent likes to drive every shot, but does a good job getting the ball back over the net and is good enough to often clean up her “mess” that driving everything can sometimes cause. There are drives that would be wiser to be drop shots, but maybe she hasn’t developed that . . . in which case, it’s “drive away”!

I was dragging but finished up play at 1:30. There was only one other game going when we finished my last game and it was a private group that had just shown up.

Shot of the Day

I was back in a game with Eric S. as my partner. We were playing against Ying and a new guy. The new guy slammed a ball. I was deep near the baseline. (I was either still back—early in the rally—or had moved back to give myself more time.) Off that slam, I hit a beautiful dropshot that he had to hit up on. I was proud of myself. It would have been very difficult to hit that shot much better.

Pickleball in local schools

I was asking Dan D. when Mr. Aragon had started pickleball at Mission Hill Middle School. (My daughter Charlotte played it during P.E. there around 2011.) “Oh, he didn’t start the pickleball program . . . I did. Not that I want to take the credit.” He said it would have been 2006. I posed a series of questions and he said he first discovered pickleball by finding mysterious paddles in storage at Harbor High School while visiting. “Middle schools don’t have tennis courts, and I played tennis, so pickleball made sense.” I had always assumed they’d played in the gym. “No, we played outside on the asphalt. We had a full class of fifty students out there playing for an hour and a half straight from the start to the end of class!” He went on that the asphalt is so bad now—rocky, making the balls erratic—that they don’t play much these days. He said that even he used to play with a several students for fun during breaks. Tristan—the really good young local player—was one of those, Dan said he hasn’t seen Tristan for years but would enjoying getting to see him again.

Number of days on a court: 593
Number of total hours: 2,616
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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