Thursday, February 22, 2024 (Court Day #627)
When I reached out to Jason a few days ago about playing this week in advance of Saturday’s tournament, he suggested drilling at Skypark this afternoon. I agreed.
Shortly after 3 o’clock, I left work and headed to Scotts Valley to meet up with Jason. It was a beautiful sunny day in the mid 60s. With blue skies and barely a cloud to be seen except for some puffy ones floating on the horizon. There is some rain predicted in the next few days but hopefully it won’t impact the tournament in two days or my pickleball class on Sunday.
I pulled into Skypark’s parking lot and walked in. There were three people on one court and then another two people on another court playing pickleball. Jason was drilling with a guy who is about to head out. The tennis courts had a doubles game going on one of the two.
Jason and I worked on crosscourt dinking, working our way up from the transition zone, and some straight-ahead dinking. We worked on that for about an hour and 15 minutes until about 4:40 p.m. Ying show up then we continued to work on the soft game with me dinking against Jason and Ying. Any ball that came up high would get driven hard so they were fire fights too.
At about 4:45 p.m. Nate showed up and then he dinked with Ying and I dinked with Jason for a couple more minutes and then we decided to have a game.
Game
We played against Nate and Ying. Early on, Jason went for an Erne, jumping to his left to try to attack a ball going to Ying. However, he jumped too soon and telegraphed the play and Ying hit the ball between myself and Jason for winner. By the time I realize that Jason was going for Erne I didn’t have enough time to cover the space. I told him if he did that during the tournament he would owe me a beer!
There was one shot while we were all at the net with Jason left and me on the right. Nate was across from me diagonally and hit the ball between Jason and me. Court positioning. I left too much space. I needed to close the middle more.
It was a pretty close back-and-forth game until Jason made four or five mistakes in a row and then we were down 5-8. I was playing pretty well. We tightened up the score until was 9-10. We were down by one point. In the midst of a rally at the net, I managed to get Nate to pop a ball up in the middle then I got set and slammed the ball… tight into the white tape of the net. Such a disappointment! Nate kidded, “You won’t get another one like that!” They ended up scoring another point and took the game 11-9. Nate has really nice serves though I can handle them just fine. He has pace, depth, and spin.
At 5:10 p.m., it was time to go. The courts were filling up with players out to have fun, but I had Santa Cruz Art league duties as a board member—there was a teacher meeting to be in.
Wrap Up
My big take away from me today is doing a better job leaning into the kitchen and taking balls out of the air even if they’re awkward. That is definitely better than the ball landing right in front of my toes and me trying to take it as a half valley with little to no margin for error. I was finding that my shots were ending up in my side of the net for those. So, out of the air. It was a bad habit that I slipped into.
I felt I played pretty well, I actually happy. If I play like that during the tournament I’ll be pleased with myself, even if we don’t win a medal.
I spent the evening basking in the glow of good play. I was delighted with how I played. I got all my serves in and one was returned by Nate into the net. I successfully returned all the serves in the game. I didn’t hit any shots into the net except that overhead when I got too excited.
On the downside, my back is still sore and tight. I this is shaping up to maybe take maybe months and not weeks to get back to normal.
Number of days on a court: 627
Number of total hours: 2,728
Number of paid coaching hours: 15.5
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